Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
2010/3/2 Philip Van Hoof pvanh...@gnome.org Stop dragging the GNOME Foundation list down these off topic roads and stop this pissing contest. I think you, and many other people, are misinterpreting this as a pissing contest. It's not. It's a quite serious debate. And I think it's insulting of you to call it a pissing contest. If you don't like the debate, then why aren't you simply ignoring us? Philip, I think a lot of people are saying they'd rather not see these arguments on the Foundation list. We've had several threads in the past month that go on and on without being productive at all and you are one of the most frequent posters to each of them. I believe the way you respond often takes the thread off topic and turns it argumentative. When I've asked in the past, you've been good about stopping the personal insults. Now I'm asking you to seriously consider each post you make to the Foundation list and ask yourself whether each part contributes productively to the conversation. For example, the three sentences I quoted above do not contribute in any way to the conversation. They start an argument with J5. If you want to argue with people, take it off list. Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 17:39 -0700, Stormy Peters wrote: 2010/3/2 Philip Van Hoof pvanh...@gnome.org Stop dragging the GNOME Foundation list down these off topic roads and stop this pissing contest. I think you, and many other people, are misinterpreting this as a pissing contest. It's not. It's a quite serious debate. And I think it's insulting of you to call it a pissing contest. If you don't like the debate, then why aren't you simply ignoring us? Philip, I think a lot of people are saying they'd rather not see these arguments on the Foundation list. And they are probably right. I wonder why *nobody* so far is going into the things that I said in my last reply, but why everybody so far is instead going into this. Anyway (really, it's fine for me. You hate it more than I do) Thing is, that I really want the GNOME Foundation to take a stance on these matters. Rather than continuing to ignore it. I want it to stop hiding. To stop being afraid. It might be surprising, but I'm pro a strong GNOME Foundation. We've had several threads in the past month that go on and on without being productive at all and you are one of the most frequent posters to each of them. Each of the threads had a different nuance. That I'm one of the most frequent posters just means that I voice my opinion. Luis's text is vague about this, but it does allow the Foundation's members to give their opinion: http://www.co-ment.net/text/141/ (I'm using the last version here) The intent of the Membership is to provide the opportunity for all contributors to have a place and a voice in the GNOME foundation. I believe the way you respond often takes the thread off topic and turns it argumentative. Everybody has believes. Good for you. When I've asked in the past, you've been good about stopping the personal insults. I tried. Thanks for acknowledging this. Now I'm asking you to seriously consider each post you make to the Foundation list and ask yourself whether each part contributes productively to the conversation. When a person is saying that programmers often forget about ethical values like freedom, he's saying things about the morality of said programmers. I'm such a programmer. Imagine that he would have said: Women often forget about ethical values like freedom Do I really have to illustrate how certain feminists within GNOME would likely respond to that? I'm willing to let go of this part of the debate. I'm not willing to accept the insult. Not ever. Why didn't the GNOME Foundation take a stance on that? It's your responsibility, Stormy. My opinion might not be popular, but this is what we expect. For example, the three sentences I quoted above do not contribute in any way to the conversation. They start an argument with J5. If you want to argue with people, take it off list. You might be right about the last three sentences. But why didn't you said the same thing to John who accused me of turning this into a pissing contest? I didn't formulate this term. I'm responding to it. Wasn't that formulation starting an argument with me? And how wasn't it? If it wasn't. 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 18:19 -0700, Stormy Peters wrote: Because you are being disruptive on the Foundation List. Again. That's your believe. Good for you. People are not interested in having this argument and you are causing people to unsubscribe to the Foundation List and to quit participating. That's their action. And you can't control that. (what's your point?) If you do support GNOME, then please stop turning every thread into an argument. Respond to things you perceive as argumentative off list. I do support GNOME. I want its Foundation to be strong. If people don't respond, assume they are not interested in that topic. Sure. I will not be replying to this thread publicly any more. Although your reply is fair, I did ask these three questions: 1) Why didn't the GNOME Foundation take a stance on that? 2) Wasn't that formulation starting an argument with me? 3) And how wasn't it? If it wasn't. Why aren't you answering those questions? 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Fri, 2010-02-26 at 21:32 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: At a technical level, I wish that GNOME made it easier to relate the visible GUI level to the underlying level of the command line As an aside, one thing I find myself doing a lot of is: $ cd ~/some/path $ command $ another Hm. This would be easier graphically... $ gnome-open . which pops Nautilus up at ~/some/path. [hey neat] And meanwhile, when I've been navigating around in Nautilus for a while and suddenly am getting annoyed that I'm not on the command line, I can (via the nautilus-open-terminal plugin which is packaged in Debian Gentoo), RightClick context menu - Open in Terminal and ta-da, $ echo $PWD /home/andrew/some/path $ [hey neat :)] which all makes for a nice duality and quite nice switching between graphical and command-line paradigms. [yes yes, you can just pop a terminal and chdir, but that's not the point. This is easier, and context driven] Anyway, not quite what Richard was getting at; his message describes a more general and pervasive case, but this all is a good step in that direction. AfC Sydney signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
The information about Facebook and the CIA comes from The Guardian. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook. Since it was proposed to write software specifically to talk with Facebook, I mentioned the issues this would raise. But Facebook is an example of a more general point: any time we consider developing software to work with a certain web site, we should ask ourselves whether we want to single out that web site for the special endorsement and promotion that is implicit in releasing such software. Different sites raise different issues, and our judgments won't be the same for all of them. The point is that we ought to think about the question, rather than promote use of a site simply because many people are already using it. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
It would make more sense perhaps to ask why you need a centralised web site for this rather than tying it together distributed sites and people together through links in the same way that rss permits news to be aggregated without there being some central repository of the world's news. I agree that is the better direction to take. But I am not proposing that we, in GNOME, undertake to replace Facebook in any fashion. That would be far outside the scope of GNOME. I am only saying that if we develop software specifically to work with Facebook, we should take care to prevent it from conveying the message Use Facebook! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Le dim. 28 févr. 2010 à 02:43:40 (+0100), Philip Van Hoof a écrit: I don't need the demeaning ethics-teachings that I should somehow be religiously in love with this free software stuff. Why? So when you don't like/need something that others say, said others have to stop saying what they say? That's interesting. I wish you'd apply that to youself because I don't like many things you say either. Dodji ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
So say we all! Unfortunately, I don't see any free (or even close) alternatives out there. The closest I can find are some local social networking websites[1] but they've traditionally concentrated on localization rather than internationalization. Social networking sites are not the only way to announce events. People do this also with email. Perhaps with a little thought we can define a spec for how to include the details of an event in a message in an easy-to-parse way, and encourage people to use that rather than facebook. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Empathy is an instant messaging client, Facebook now allows access to its chat network via XMPP. I meant that on filling your info Empathy would configure an account for you so you can chat with your friends in Facebook using a free software client, Empathy, instead of the web based chat they have. That sounds like a good feature, if joined with support for other chat systems that people use, for identi.ca, and other such sites. The line between working with facebook and specifically encouraging use of facebook is a subtle one. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Okay, I had hoped this might simply die out, but instead, it's becoming increasingly absurd as well as increasingly personal in tone. First, Philip didn't ask anyone to stop saying things, he expressed some dismay at what was being said, and not without reason. Beyond the suggestionwhich Philip has notedthat GNOME programmers were generally in need of ethical guidance from the FSF on matters involving freedom, this thread included the suggestion that GNOME behavior should be predicated on unfounded and unsupported rumor (i.e. that Facebook is probably sharing all of your information with the CIA). I'm surprised that a suggestion that a specific site be singled out by GNOME for extra-special treatment, including warning messages, based on what amounts to unsourced gossip, is being treated with even a moment's serious consideration. This Facebook rumor seems to be not much different from last year's equally unsupported claim that Apple maintained a secret back-door in OS X, for which an apology was extracted from the FSF, presumably on the instigation of Apple's Legal departmentand I note, without much amusement, that the sole citation offered in support of this latest claim regarding Facebook leads to a non-existent web page. I do not believe that the GNOME Foundation should sign up to be in a position to have to apologize to Facebook, nor do I think it should be an official position of the GNOME Foundation that using Facebook is a harmful practice. If the GNOME community is hoping for better engagement with Facebook and the like, want to encourage their meaningful participation in our efforts, and hope to cultivate some appreciation on their part of community concerns, surely claiming that they're in the business of routinely breaking Federal lawwithout compelling supporting evidenceisn't the way to be going about it. For my part, I don't believe that spreading defamatory gossip in the name of freedom is especially ethical. Perhaps I've misunderstood Mr. Stallman's intention in making such an apparently irresponsible claim here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: pvanhoof issue (was: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap)
Hi, On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 5:31 AM, Jonathon Jongsma jonat...@quotidian.org wrote: On Sun, 2010-02-28 at 03:11 +0100, Philip Van Hoof wrote: On Sun, 2010-02-28 at 04:02 +0200, Zeeshan Ali wrote: Hi everyone, I don't think we need ethics-teachings about this. We GNOME programmers know. We do. I can't say for others but I for one find it extremely insulting when Mr. Van Hoof represent me without my concent. I really want to know who in the the hell made him the GNOME developers' representative and be able to tell others what I know and need? Saying that we don't need lessons morality is extremely insulting to you? I think you know perfectly well what Zeeshan is objecting to, despite your feigned incredulity above. You repeatedly post imflammatory things and try to pick fights with Richard Stallman and the FSF, and then you act as if you're speaking for GNOME developers when the predictable argument begins. I for one have basically stopped reading most foundation-list threads because you insist on dragging every single conversation down into the mud. Thanks for your clarification. Thing is that Philip had been using the word 'we' quite a lot in the recent endless discussions as part of his crusade to draw a thick border between Free Software and GNOME[1]. I didn't complain so far because it wasn't always 100% clear if he means 'all GNOME developers' by 'we' until now where he made it perfectly clear. Now that that is sorted out, I would like the foundation to forbid him from doing so in future. Once that is done, I can live a happy life by joining the ever growing 'just put pvanhoof on your ignore list on IRC and email' group. -- Regards, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) FSF member#5124 [1] Which I believe is doomed to fail since GNOME started as an effort to create a completely free (as in freedom) desktop environment and despite all efforts from Philip Lefty we have yet to see any compelling reason to change that definition. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Hi, On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 5:03 PM, Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org wrote: So say we all! Unfortunately, I don't see any free (or even close) alternatives out there. The closest I can find are some local social networking websites[1] but they've traditionally concentrated on localization rather than internationalization. Social networking sites are not the only way to announce events. People do this also with email. Perhaps with a little thought we can define a spec for how to include the details of an event in a message in an easy-to-parse way, and encourage people to use that rather than facebook. If by 'people' you mean people like you and me, sure! this has a very good chance of success. However, I doubt you meant that. Here is how I know this has very little chances of success: I personally know many people who prefer facebook messages over email and I am not talking about events or other messages but just plain messages to friends. A solution that IMHO has much better chances of success is to create a free alternative to facebook. However, who is going to do it and more importantly who is going to pay for this effort? :( -- Regards, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) FSF member#5124 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: pvanhoof issue (was: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap)
Hi, On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 7:42 PM, Dodji Seketeli do...@seketeli.org wrote: Le dim. 28 févr. 2010 à 19:20:39 (+0200), Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) a écrit: Thanks for your clarification. Thing is that Philip had been using the word 'we' quite a lot in the recent endless discussions as part of his crusade to draw a thick border between Free Software and GNOME[1]. I didn't complain so far because it wasn't always 100% clear if he means 'all GNOME developers' by 'we' until now where he made it perfectly clear. Now that that is sorted out, I would like the foundation to forbid him from doing so in future. Once that is done, I can live a happy life by joining the ever growing 'just put pvanhoof on your ignore list on IRC and email' group. I feel your pain, Zeeshan, seriously. But FWIW I tend to be against that sort of police on foundation-list, even though I agree that would give a break to people like you and me. Me too! Please keep in mind that I am not suggesting any actions against Philip or anyone. All I want is for him to stop saying anything on my behalf. Other than that, he can do or say whatever he wants. So yeah, I am part of the club you mentionned above, but just for IRC. Maybe I should just go ahead and do the same for email. Why am I not surprised. :) -- Regards, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) FSF member#5124 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
A solution that IMHO has much better chances of success is to create a free alternative to facebook. However, who is going to do it and more importantly who is going to pay for this effort? :( You would have the same problem as taking on ebay or replacing the internet. The economic value of a network is armwavingly proportional to the square of the number of members. (Metcalfe's law) It would make more sense perhaps to ask why you need a centralised web site for this rather than tying it together distributed sites and people together through links in the same way that rss permits news to be aggregated without there being some central repository of the world's news. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 11:08 AM, Lefty (石鏡 ) le...@shugendo.org wrote: [...] I'm surprised that a suggestion that a specific site be singled out by GNOME for extra-special treatment, including warning messages, based on what amounts to unsourced gossip, is being treated with even a moment's serious consideration. This Facebook rumor seems to be not much different from last year's equally unsupported claim that Apple maintained a secret back-door in OS X, for which an apology was extracted from the FSF, presumably on the instigation of Apple's Legal department‹and I note, without much amusement, that the sole citation offered in support of this latest claim regarding Facebook leads to a non-existent web page. I do not believe that the GNOME Foundation should sign up to be in a position to have to apologize to Facebook, nor do I think it should be an official position of the GNOME Foundation that using Facebook is a harmful practice. With free software you would have the freedom of examining the social networking software in place, if you were not satisfied with how your personal data was being handled; then you could modify it and run your own derived version. I think its clear that GNOME is a free software community/desktop and while we dont need to throw poo at proprietary vendors or proprietary social networking softwares, we at least need to represent free software, which is the one common thing that holds us all together. Therefore no it is not rude for a free software desktop to warn or alert about times when the task you want to accomplish implies using proprietary software, its expected that we represent the ethical values that hold us together as a community. If the GNOME community is hoping for better engagement with Facebook and the like, want to encourage their meaningful participation in our efforts, and hope to cultivate some appreciation on their part of community concerns, surely claiming that they're in the business of routinely breaking Federal law‹without compelling supporting evidence‹isn't the way to be going about it. Im sorry in advance but this is a little overboard. First, GNOME is not issuing any such statement or claims as far as I can see and I have been following the thread, so lets not get carried away. But more importantly, No I dont think we are in the business of changing our attitude in order to gain the favour and attention of whichever corporation x, I think we are above that and people cooperate with us when its beneficial for everyone involved, period. Regards, -Tristan For my part, I don't believe that spreading defamatory gossip in the name of freedom is especially ethical. Perhaps I've misunderstood Mr. Stallman's intention in making such an apparently irresponsible claim here. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: pvanhoof issue (was: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap)
Take this stuff off list please. -- Regards, Olav ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
IMHO talking about Facebook and who should demand them to free info is a bit out of place here. Please let's not diverge the thread into that or into a battle about how much we should promote Free Software or non Free alternatives. In my fantasies, the free software movement might be so influential that we could make demands and Facebook would have to heed them. In reality, we are not in a position to correct the social problems caused by Facebook, and I do not suggest making that our goal. But we do have a duty to make sure, if we develop software specifically to work with Facebook, that we are not promoting Facebook as a consequence. There are many social problems in life, and nobody would expect us to eliminate them all. Most of them are not our priority to work on. But even when eliminating a problem is not our priority, we should make an effort to avoid making it worse. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Hi, It is also important to give equally good support to other systems people can use for telling each other about events; for instance, social networking sites of the free software community, and peer-to-peer methods. This way, GNOME won't favor Facebook over those other methods. I'm sure most of us agree to that. Don't worry ;). So say we all! Unfortunately, I don't see any free (or even close) alternatives out there. The closest I can find are some local social networking websites[1] but they've traditionally concentrated on localization rather than internationalization. This policy did help them succeed in the countries they operated in and/or targeted but only until facebook became widespread. They failed to compete against this new service that offered the same features they offered but attracted users from all over the world. -- Regards, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) FSF member#5124 [1] http://irc-galleria.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Thu, 2010-02-25 at 09:26 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: but none has actually stepped up to write actual code (as Martyn says, everytime you start writting something, you hit the legacy wall). It sounds like this might be a case of conflicting goals that cannot all be satisfied. If so, we might be able to enable progress to start by making a decision about how to resolve that conflict. I feel this is the more important piece in this discussion, and I'm a bit sad to this this point get so little attention. Now, I'm a Debian Developer, so I know how cool it is to rehash all kinds of useless discussions again, and again ;D, but I think we should really be focusing on this specific point, trying to figure it out. How do we balance rock solid, stable. proven with exciting, new, innovative? How do we keep the standard (read legacy) desktop use cases working well, while still being able to address the new needs the world is throwing at us? I think much has been done to keep GTK+ up with the times, lately - we do have a number of heroes that are pushing GTK+ strongly into the next step, and we now have exciting technologies like clutter-gtk, whose power has been extended to a point that allow us to do all kinds of wicked stuff (http://people.collabora.co.uk/~kov/cluttered-flash.ogv)[0]. Still, we keep hitting some walls that are hard to cross, as is expected when you want stuff to be rock solid. How to lower these barriers, or avoid them is what we need to figure out. I think the GNOME platform as a whole has always been very good at this balance. Part of our success in this is the fact that we have several, separate components, instead of monoliths, and we can evolve each piece of our platform independently, and bring new pieces in, and throw old pieces out. And we've been very good at throwing old stuff away, for what it's worth. I'm pretty sure we will be able to figure this one out, but it's important we share, and work towards a vision, indeed. See you, [0]: http://people.collabora.co.uk/~kov/git/clutter-flash.git/ -- Gustavo Noronha Silva g...@gnome.org GNOME Project ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Fri, 2010-02-26 at 21:32 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: If people are going to use Facebook, they should access it with free software. And it is useful for GNOME to do a good job of that. Richard, I wish you and the FSF would focus more on user rights and licensing of (meta)data coming from websites like Facebook, and that you'd focus less on demeaning insinuations to GNOME programmers that they know not about ethics. Such websites and services are becoming increasingly important in the real market. If you'd care about the freedom of the population of this world, you'd see that this is an area of focus and importance. Just my two cents. At the same time, using Facebook is a harmful practice. It gives a misleading impression of privacy, it has close ties with the CIA and probably lets the CIA look at everything people upload. (See http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook.) It uses Flash format for video, which is harmful to free software. Some of its services are SaaS, which takes away control of your computing just as proprietary software does. So if GNOME is to provide a special feature for using Facebook, it should also warn people that they shouldn't trust Facebook with anything sensitive. It should make sure Gnash is installed for playing Flash, rather than lead people to install non-free Adobe software. And it should not do anything to facilitate or encourage use of the SaaS features of Facebook. Sure, I think such a warning should indeed be included in the UI work that I'll let Adrian Bustany work on next few weeks. I don't think we need ethics-teachings about this. We GNOME programmers know. We do. (Can anyone tell me what what an empathy account does and what an f-spot export configuration does?) You had a discussion with Ruben Vermeersh earlier, Ruben is a F-Spot developer. I'm sure he can give you an answer (he's added in CC). It is also important to give equally good support to other systems people can use for telling each other about events; for instance, social networking sites of the free software community, and peer-to-peer methods. This way, GNOME won't favor Facebook over those other methods. Yes, as I posted in my earlier E-mail there are metadata miners for flickr, twitter, etc. The service where the metadata ends up being stored locally (Tracker's store) uses RDF with Nepomuk as ontology and allows access to the metadata through SPARQL. RDF, Nepomuk and SPARQL are all free standards and have multiple free implementations (the free definition that FSF uses). The problem with for example Facebook is that it's uncertain that this metadata can be stored separately from Facebook for unlimited time. 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
I'm going to call for an end of thread, If people want to sort out what their personal points of view on what GNOME should be, I would suggest them to follow up that discussion in private and not in this list anymore. If people want to contribute to a strategic roadmap for GNOME, I think we all would welcome anyone coming up with a compelling set of goals and start working on action items to execute that vision and do so in the respective channels (marketing list to name an example). Talking forever about what GNOME should be and expecting for someone to follow that direction is not going to effectively change anything. Thank you. -- Cheers, Alberto Ruiz ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Sun, 2010-02-28 at 00:30 +, Alberto Ruiz wrote: I'm going to call for an end of thread, I think you're wrong, this thread should not be closed yet. If people want to sort out what their personal points of view on what GNOME should be, I would suggest them to follow up that discussion in private and not in this list anymore. If people want to contribute to a strategic roadmap for GNOME, I think we all would welcome anyone coming up with a compelling set of goals and start working on action items to execute that vision and do so in the respective channels (marketing list to name an example). Talking forever about what GNOME should be and expecting for someone to follow that direction is not going to effectively change anything. Sure it does. Thank you. 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
El dom, 28-02-2010 a las 00:30 +, Alberto Ruiz escribió: I'm going to call for an end of thread, If people want to sort out what their personal points of view on what GNOME should be, I would suggest them to follow up that discussion in private and not in this list anymore. +1. Disagreeing and discussing is fun and educational, but let's please keep *on topic* about how to make GNOME the best desktop thanks to a fantastic strategy and roadmap. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Sat, 2010-02-27 at 19:48 -0500, Diego Escalante Urrelo wrote: Hey Diego, El dom, 28-02-2010 a las 00:49 +0100, Philip Van Hoof escribió: On Fri, 2010-02-26 at 21:32 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: [cut] I wish you and the FSF would focus more on user rights and licensing of (meta)data coming from websites like Facebook, and that you'd focus less on demeaning insinuations to GNOME programmers that they know not about ethics. I don't think Richard meant any of this. Being the one he replied to, I think he's reply was perfectly well behaved and his intentions the best of all to remind us that we should always try to promote Free Software. Being the one who replied to Richard, I don't think that I tried to insinuate that Richard's behavior while replying to your E-mail was bad. I don't understand why you try to rephrase it like that. However: Richard *has* insinuated that GNOME programmers forget about ethics like freedom, in this discussion thread. Let me illustrate: On Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:27:21 -0500 Richard Stallman wrote: The values that programmers often forget are the ethical values such as freedom. http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2010-February/msg00129.html When you talk about programmers within a context like a GNOME mailing list, you're actually targeting GNOME programmers. Aren't you? Why not? In case that wasn't the intent, I asked not to be ambiguous. Is that somehow unfair? How then? If not, then why was that remark made when we're already the most free desktop in existence? With free being FSF's definition of free. And I think we all agree that our precise personal beliefs might be different but that as a whole we all enjoy Free Software and its consequences in society and technology. I enjoy wikipedia; wikipedia is about freed knowledge. I enjoy opensource software; I can improve my skills by being involved in its development. I also enjoy the freed knowledge of it. I don't know about free software. Even after more than a decade it's still an alien term for me. I know it is opensource for as far as I'm concerned. And that's all I care about. (yes, I read most of FSF's webpages, it's still alien) I don't need the demeaning ethics-teachings that I should somehow be religiously in love with this free software stuff. Why? Either it helps me improve my skills, or it doesn't. Either it frees knowledge, or it doesn't. Free software does both, good. Free software does because it does what any opensource does. But there it stops. Please stop idealizing it as something better. It's not. So it doesn't sound out of place to remind us about it. It's out of place to insinuate that GNOME developers forget about ethical values. Or that anybody does. I actually do spend a significant amount of my life's time thinking about philosophy; I don't accept that I'm unethical. That claim is, for me, a direct insult; I don't accept it. IMHO talking about Facebook and who should demand them to free info is a bit out of place here. Please let's not diverge the thread into that or into a battle about how much we should promote Free Software or non Free alternatives. The freedoms about data collected by websites like Facebook is likely the most important discussion of our generation. I think the topic is clear for all of us: Free Software rocks I can see you have an ideology. That's fine for you. I respectfully disassociate myself from simplistic slogans, though. and we are trying to lure people who don't use it yet into using it so they can enjoy the same freedoms we do. Let's keep changing the world :-). Ideology makes people blind for reality. Friendly and lovingly calling for the end of this branch of the thread, Up to them. 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
pvanhoof issue (was: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap)
Hi everyone, I don't think we need ethics-teachings about this. We GNOME programmers know. We do. I can't say for others but I for one find it extremely insulting when Mr. Van Hoof represent me without my concent. I really want to know who in the the hell made him the GNOME developers' representative and be able to tell others what I know and need? -- Regards Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) Sent from Nokia N900___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: pvanhoof issue (was: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap)
On Sun, 2010-02-28 at 04:02 +0200, Zeeshan Ali wrote: Hi everyone, I don't think we need ethics-teachings about this. We GNOME programmers know. We do. I can't say for others but I for one find it extremely insulting when Mr. Van Hoof represent me without my concent. I really want to know who in the the hell made him the GNOME developers' representative and be able to tell others what I know and need? Saying that we don't need lessons morality is extremely insulting to you? (that's all I said) 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: pvanhoof issue (was: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap)
On Sun, 2010-02-28 at 03:11 +0100, Philip Van Hoof wrote: On Sun, 2010-02-28 at 04:02 +0200, Zeeshan Ali wrote: Hi everyone, I don't think we need ethics-teachings about this. We GNOME programmers know. We do. I can't say for others but I for one find it extremely insulting when Mr. Van Hoof represent me without my concent. I really want to know who in the the hell made him the GNOME developers' representative and be able to tell others what I know and need? Saying that we don't need lessons morality is extremely insulting to you? (that's all I said) Cheers, Philip I think you know perfectly well what Zeeshan is objecting to, despite your feigned incredulity above. You repeatedly post imflammatory things and try to pick fights with Richard Stallman and the FSF, and then you act as if you're speaking for GNOME developers when the predictable argument begins. I for one have basically stopped reading most foundation-list threads because you insist on dragging every single conversation down into the mud. jonner ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
If people are going to use Facebook, they should access it with free software. And it is useful for GNOME to do a good job of that. At the same time, using Facebook is a harmful practice. It gives a misleading impression of privacy, it has close ties with the CIA and probably lets the CIA look at everything people upload. (See http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook.) It uses Flash format for video, which is harmful to free software. Some of its services are SaaS, which takes away control of your computing just as proprietary software does. So if GNOME is to provide a special feature for using Facebook, it should also warn people that they shouldn't trust Facebook with anything sensitive. It should make sure Gnash is installed for playing Flash, rather than lead people to install non-free Adobe software. And it should not do anything to facilitate or encourage use of the SaaS features of Facebook. (Can anyone tell me what what an empathy account does and what an f-spot export configuration does?) It is also important to give equally good support to other systems people can use for telling each other about events; for instance, social networking sites of the free software community, and peer-to-peer methods. This way, GNOME won't favor Facebook over those other methods. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
At a technical level, I wish that GNOME made it easier to relate the visible GUI level to the underlying level of the command line. When I designed GDB, previous debuggers for C programs had C-level commands (viewing source code, specifying line numbers, examining data using symbol names and displaying values as C structures) and machine-level commands (viewing instructions, specifying addresses, examining data as words or bytes) and no easy way to connect between them. That was often a hassle, so I took care to provide ways to move between the two levels, for instance to convert addresses into line numbers and vice versa. The GNU system today has a similar kind of problem in that error messages from GNOME say nothing about what's going on at a lower level. They only say This didn't work. It seems to be intended to completely hide the lower levels of the system even when we WANT to look at them. I suppose most users don't know about the lower levels and don't want to know. But many users do want to know; they want a way to find out about the failure: what program, what command was run, what process, what file, what error message, etc. For the next major release, how about providing a systematic way to get this information in windows that pop up to tell you something failed? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
but none has actually stepped up to write actual code (as Martyn says, everytime you start writting something, you hit the legacy wall). It sounds like this might be a case of conflicting goals that cannot all be satisfied. If so, we might be able to enable progress to start by making a decision about how to resolve that conflict. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Freedom from slavery is a means to an end, the end being a just society with no racial discrimination and equal opportunity for all. Freedom is not merely a means to achieve something else. It is necessary in its own right. Mere equality of opportunity is inadequate if it doesn't mean freedom. In the same way, freedom for computer users is a means to an end - that end being that we provide a better computing environment than proprietary alternatives, and not simply a functional free environment. This is not the philosophy that GNOME was founded on. We launched GNOME to gain freedom because we demand freedom. There is no substitute. A free computing environment is always better than proprietary alternatives. It is better ethically and socially, because of freedom. Of course, we would like to make it better in practical ways too. But we should not treat freedom as a secondary goal. If a computer user can be free, but will end up with an inferior computing environment because of it, he may welcome returning to a proprietary environment, as many Mac OS X users free software developers have. If he doesn't appreciate freedom as such, he might indeed do that. To avoid that we need to take two kinds of steps: A. Try to make GNOME better in practical ways too. B. Teach him to appreciate freedom, so he will recognize that the proprietary programs are inherently inferior ethically. It makes sense to work on both of them in parallel, according to the opportunities that occur. This is where the open source discourse is weak. It fails to do B. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
While freedom is an important factor in life, it is not the only defining factor for quality of life. At the end of the day, most of us want a certain level of comfort too. We need a strong vision and strategy to become best of breed in software. Merely being free will only please the ascetic who can live of mental joy, I don't think anyone suggested that we should not bother trying to make GNOME convenient to use. To remember freedom as a value does not imply forgetting about practical convenience. But we don't need to make an effort to remind ourselves to value the practical qualities of our software, because there is no chance we would forget that. The general tendency in the world around us is to judge software on practical qualities alone. We as users appreciate convenience as well as freedom. We could hardly forget to think about the practical qualities. The values that programmers often forget are the ethical values such as freedom. These are the ones that go against the usual current. So these are the ones we need to make efforts to remind ourselves about. but it will never capture a significant market, which in the end just means that you'll slowly become irrelevant. Is your standard of relevance based solely on market success? Only a few percent of computer users run the GNU/Linux system, and even fewer run BSD. Some people would say this is not a significant market. But these systems are the only ways to use a computer and have freedom, and that makes them very relevant for a different set of values. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
How about a healthy dose of ambition and aim for becoming the best platform of choice, regardless of the freeness? If you mean that we would like GNOME to be better than the other desktops in practical terms, of course we would like that. That is an answer to the question, Where would we like GNOME to arrive? I'm responding to a different question: What world problem will GNOME have solved? If GNOME becomes clearly practically superior to other desktops, or even if it doesn't, winning freedom on the desktop is an achievement that GNOME can claim. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
2010/2/25 Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org: A. Try to make GNOME better in practical ways too. B. Teach him to appreciate freedom, so he will recognize that the proprietary programs are inherently inferior ethically. It makes sense to work on both of them in parallel, according to the opportunities that occur. This is where the open source discourse is weak. It fails to do B. Hi Richard, I appreciate your contribution to the discussion. however, point B is pretty much like saying that instead of coming up with Copyleft you should have run for congress and change the whole Intelectual Property policy for the US. Fact is that some people have no choice, they study at university or they work on a company where they cannot chose their platform. I worked part time for 2 years on pushing a fully open source stack in the university of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and without a migration path (that is, open source ports of apps and platforms to Windows and equivalents to some needed components such as AutoCad), it was pretty much imposible to execute. We did plan for education on the opensource philosophy and tools (in fact right now they're running professional capacitation for the open source stack), but it is still hard without some technicals. Sometimes you need bridges (or hacks) like the one you did with the Copyright, to approach your goals effectively and without harming the image of the movement you're trying to promote (if we deploy opensource, and turns out as a hassle for everyone, even if they understand the ethics behind the move, the reputation of the movement is way harmed). Computers are meant to solve people's problem, they have no mean for themselves except for people like us, and I'd like to think that the opensource community does not only cares about the license of their source code, but the usefulness, ease of use and the universal access that it can potentially bring. -- Cheers, Alberto Ruiz ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Thu, 2010-02-25 at 09:27 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: but it will never capture a significant market, which in the end just means that you'll slowly become irrelevant. Is your standard of relevance based solely on market success? Only a few percent of computer users run the GNU/Linux system, and even fewer run BSD. Some people would say this is not a significant market. But these systems are the only ways to use a computer and have freedom, and that makes them very relevant for a different set of values. I value the potential market we can cater as highly important, as this directly determines the size of the economical ecosystem we can build around F/OSS. While most of us are not in this to become rich, we all have to eat and feed the bills. If we want our project to have significant traction, we'll need to create a system that's self-sustaining. Furthermore, and I'll think we'll have to agree to disagree here, I don't think the moral/ethical victory of running a F/OSS solution in itself will convince more than a fraction of the market. This is very parallel to the environmentalist movement: yes they capture the minds of a fraction of the population based on ethics, but no, they did not cause the increased attention for the environment. The fact that we will lose out in comfort combined with the fact that greener solutions are getting economically preferable have caused this attention, with a better environment as a pleasant byproduct. The same applies to GNOME/KDE/...: I agree with you that we have won and are the freest thing out there, we have captured the minds of the ethical. But if we want to make the world a truly better, more free, place, we need to focus on winning the market and have freedom as the pleasant byproduct. Because, like being green, a large fraction of the population just doesn't care about software ethics, regardless of how much you educate them (I have a lot of friends that fully agree with the F/OSS philosophy, yet stil buy a Mac out of comfort). It is only when you can make your option the best all across the board that you can capture this segment, which is needed for a critical mass. If we truly want to make our world better, we need to aim for critical mass, such that we can actually have a dominant influence. Without that, we're just pleasing the ethics knights, but we'll be leaving the ignorant/uncaring in the cold. Keep in mind that not everyone wants to be an activist, but everyone does want a better life. The question is: do you want to save the climate or do you want everyone to think green? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 11:53 AM, Juanjo Marin juanjomari...@yahoo.eswrote: This thread is about how can we set a strategic roadmap. It is more about innovation vs stability. We are doing pretty well on the stability side with our six-months cycle schedule. We are even adding some innovation, but we must find a way to set long term ambicious goals and set a plan for accomplising in all its extension. GNOME 3 looks like the best strategic movement since long time ago. I'm excited about it ;). We must go forward. I agree! We should already have an idea about what GNOME 4 will look like so we can create a plan to get there and excite others to join us. What's our vision? Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
OnOn Thu, 2010-02-25 at 09:26 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote: A free computing environment is always better than proprietary alternatives. It is better ethically and socially, because of freedom. Of course, we would like to make it better in practical ways too. But we should not treat freedom as a secondary goal. The main GNOME project goal is delivering a free desktop to our users. It is in our DNA, is what we are trying to do all the time. We don't forget about that, we can't !! ;) This thread is about how can we set a strategic roadmap. It is more about innovation vs stability. We are doing pretty well on the stability side with our six-months cycle schedule. We are even adding some innovation, but we must find a way to set long term ambicious goals and set a plan for accomplising in all its extension. GNOME 3 looks like the best strategic movement since long time ago. I'm excited about it ;). We must go forward. best regards, -- Juanjo Marín ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Hi, The big idea behind GNOME3 can be to offer a completely new User Experience. GNOME2 did well with the usual Menus/panel/folders approach, it brought stability, performance and we built the basic blocks of a Desktop. Now comes the time to use those blocks to revamp how the user interact with its computer. In some way, it should do on the Desktop what maemo5 did on a mobile device: use the things we already know in a new way and it doesn't look like the usual boring computer. To achieve this, we have 3 big new components: 1) GNOME-Shell: maybe it needs a lot of usability testing, maybe it is polemic (which is good), maybe it needs more effort polishing the implementation, but definitely looks fresh. It is a new way to interact with the desktop. 2) Tracker: It allows as to have a central repository of information. Contacts, Messaging, Tags, etc. in one place. Applications share data, and specially LINK data from different sources. The user receive a picture from his contact X, telepathy saves that relation in tracker, and later we can show it in some fancy way, maybe relaunching the old Dashboard project. The user can set tags on contacts, documents, songs, pictures and see all that content together in the same view (maybe some FUSE or nautlius magic is needed here) 3) Zeitgeist: At the moment the Journal is the big use-case for Zeitgeist, and it is enough if it works fine. Functionality like showing related contents or related people when the user opens a document would be great and will come at some point. There are still some open issues about how this components work together: how to show the things Tracker stores in a meaningful way in GNOME-Shell, or how to combine the information from Tracker and Zeitgeist. But GNOME3(.0) is just the first step, during the GNOME3 series we can do a lot of improvement a bring new applications and new ideas with these ingredients. Maybe during those releases we can try a tag-oriented nautilus, or a content-oriented Open/Save dialog. If we feel really brave, we can play with the idea of hide completely the filesystem to the user, why not? Besides, I see some interesting features appearing here and there, and should be working fine in GNOME3 out-of-the-box. I would expect to start my brand-new computer at home, install GNOME3, and see all my media content in my PS3. We have the pieces to do that (UPnP support with Rygel). Then i take my laptop, travel somewhere, and the pairing with my phone to use its data connection should work fine with a nice and easy configuration dialog. AFAIK, we also have the pieces in place (NetworkManager). The user can configure its flickr/facebook/gmail account in one place, and the sharing is enabled in the applications with 0 configuration (maemo does something like that already). The Network part of GNOME finally appears :) These are just few use-cases that came to my mind. I am sure some people out there can come with newer and more original ideas. We have also some other technologies there, waiting to be used in something valuable for the user, like ubuntu-one/coachDB, the epiphany-gtk thing that can show widgets embedded in the HTML, and javascript is floating around without a clear place in the platform (and it looks more a more important everywhere). And as a side note, some not-so-new technologies are IMHO understimated, like avahi; and internally in the platform Vala and gobject-introspection can open new opportunities. I don't want to reopen the (eternal) toolkit discussion. All these ideas can be implemented with the current toolkit. We will find the concrete limitations on our way, and if we need something more or something else, then we can think in a new toolkit, reuse another, move to HTML+javascript, move to silverlight... whatever, but we can still do a lot of things with what we have, so don't let it block other innovations. Finally, to elaborate a roadmap, we could go through all the GNOME (Desktop) applications and check how can they integrate better with the Shell/tracker/zeitgeist, probably offering some new surprising functionality. This is my euro to the strategic roadmap. I hope some people share the enthusiasm for offering something new in GNOME3, even if it is completely different from what i propose here. Regards, Ivan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
El jue, 25-02-2010 a las 22:29 +0200, Ivan Frade escribió: Hi, The big idea behind GNOME3 can be to offer a completely new User Experience. GNOME2 did well with the usual Menus/panel/folders approach, it brought stability, performance and we built the basic blocks of a Desktop. Now comes the time to use those blocks to revamp how the user interact with its computer. In some way, it should do on the Desktop what maemo5 did on a mobile device: use the things we already know in a new way and it doesn't look like the usual boring computer. I agree with Frade, for example among my university friends facebook is quite important, it's how you interact with a lot of people you don't see daily and some times the way to find out about meetings, parties, etc. Why can't we provide an easy way for people to integrate all this info to the local apps? A small example that I believe is doable right now: - you login to GNOME for the first time - you are asked for personal info - you are asked also for your facebook id (example) - the fb id gets processed into an empathy account and a f-spot export configuration (or whatever wants to consume it) - the panel/clock show fb events you are attending, evolution reminds you of them also I'm sure my univ mates would appreciate a desktop that eases their FB experience. Notice how we would improve that without buzz-y words and without smoking crack. My Peruvian Nuevo Sol (PEN) for the discussion. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Thu, 2010-02-25 at 16:40 -0500, Diego Escalante Urrelo wrote: Hi there, I agree with Frade, for example among my university friends facebook is quite important, it's how you interact with a lot of people you don't see daily and some times the way to find out about meetings, parties, etc. Why can't we provide an easy way for people to integrate all this info to the local apps? A small example that I believe is doable right now: - you login to GNOME for the first time - you are asked for personal info - you are asked also for your facebook id (example) - the fb id gets processed into an empathy account and a f-spot export configuration (or whatever wants to consume it) - the panel/clock show fb events you are attending, evolution reminds you of them also Starting the first of March lasting until August will Adrien Bustany (abustany on IRC) be working for me on a schoolwork internship. Because his GSoc was about developing miners for web sources, I asked him whether he'd be interested in finalizing this work. He made me this plan. Each task is roughly a two week sprint: * Adapting miner-web to get it merged it in Tracker's master * Writeback for web miners: Twitter/Identi.ca, Flickr, PicasaWeb, Facebook (Facebook last because of licensing issues). * UI integration for both the desktop and the mobile versions (using Harmattan's Qt). * Automatic metadata improvement using web sources. * UI integration to control the automatic metadata fetcher(s), both desktop and mobile, or only mobile to save some time. Discussion about privacy issues. Bandwidth control (when is it ok to pull data, when isn't it, etc). * Integration with Harmattan core services: address book, GPS, pictures, videos. This will require more SDK information. * A bugzilla miner and a issues ontology (to be planned in a sprint) You can find an example of such a web miner here: http://git.gnome.org/browse/tracker/tree/src/tracker-miner-facebook/facebook.vala?h=miner-web Here you can find some of the code Adrien developed during his GSoc (needs refactoring to Tracker's miner libraries): git://git.mymadcat.com/bridge-twitter git://git.mymadcat.com/vapi git://git.mymadcat.com/ontologies git://git.mymadcat.com/libtrackerbridge git://git.mymadcat.com/bridge-manager git://git.mymadcat.com/bridge-facebook git://git.mymadcat.com/bridge-twitter git://git.mymadcat.com/bridge-gdata git://git.mymadcat.com/bridge-flickr I must add that, although many of the GNOME people are probably Facebook fanboys, Facebook's license doesn't allow you to just start using and copying the data. Even if the data is about yourself, it's owned by Facebook. I think the licenses allow you to maximally cache things for several hours. Not forever. I think those cloud licenses will be quite a challenge in the years to come, by the way. I'm sure my univ mates would appreciate a desktop that eases their FB experience. Notice how we would improve that without buzz-y words and without smoking crack. How about inviting your university mates to join Adrien on this effort? Given that I will be asking Adrien to focus mostly on what is publicly released about Maemo's Harmattan, your university mates and yourself can focus on providing similar UI integration with the GNOME desktop! 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
If the freedom offered needs to be taught and be appreciated, there is a fundamentally flaw with that. True freedom should be obvious once it is tasted. If we had made that our criterion, it would have led us to reject many past advances in our understanding of human rights. Society generally needs to be educated to understand the need for a freedom which has not been generally accepted in the past. Pick almost any advance in human rights, and you'll see that it required educating people who had been taught to consider it absurd. We can see this today, when we look at the campaign to give gay couples equal rights, and the campaign for abortion rights, which has not been won globally. Even freedom of speech was not obvious, and there are still people who don't get it. This is even more true for ideas of freedom that are inconvenient for the large corporations that dominate most of the media. They can use their power to discourage the sort of discussion through which people could start to endorse those ideas of freedom. This makes it even more necessary for us to work to encourage that discussion. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
I value the potential market we can cater as highly important, as this directly determines the size of the economical ecosystem we can build around F/OSS. While most of us are not in this to become rich, we all have to eat and feed the bills. If we want our project to have significant traction, we'll need to create a system that's self-sustaining. Our system is already self-sustaining. We have been using GNU/Linux since 1992, and it is much better now than it was 18 years ago. Of course, we would like to make it technically better, and we want to liberate more users. There may be hard work to be done. But if you say we are incapable of achieving things we have in fact already done, that misrepresents the situation. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
A. Try to make GNOME better in practical ways too. B. Teach him to appreciate freedom, so he will recognize that the proprietary programs are inherently inferior ethically. however, point B is pretty much like saying that instead of coming up with Copyleft you should have run for congress and change the whole Intelectual Property policy for the US. I wouldn't want to change the whole intellectual property policy. Intellectual property includes a dozen different laws; most of them have nothing to do with making software proprietary, so why would the free software movement want to change them? Any time you use the term intellectual property you are making a very broad statement, probably not wise, so it is better not to use that term. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html for explanation. Since copyleft is a way of using copyright law, perhaps copyright law is what you meant to say. With that change, your statement would begin to be coherent. However, I think it is not correct. To change copyright law for software, or to change the DMCA which imposes censorship on free software, would only be possible after building a large and strong free software movement. In other words, changing laws cannot be the first step, because first we need to convince a large number of people to value and demand freedom. This reinforces my point that we need to get to work on teaching people to value and demand freedom. Fortunately, that is something we can do now, and we have been doing it for 26 years. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 09:03 +, Martyn Russell wrote: On 23/02/10 22:52, Philip Van Hoof wrote: On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 16:53 +, Martyn Russell wrote: Hi Martyn, Don't be confused: most of this reply isn't directed at you personally. Sure, but I will indulge all the same ;) That's ok ;) I'll be cutting the text a bit. [CUT] (see?) We aren't waiting for anything :) But you can't refactor exposed public struct pointers which are in common use since you break the API and any application using that structure. I think it's time for a few major API breaks in Gtk+, and why don't we start doing more development of core components (like Gtk+) in Vala? I bet it would make things a lot more easy for contributors. I remember that at a hackfest in Berlin that it was proposed to have IDL files that describe the API. Vala's VAPI files' syntax was proposed for this. With GIR (introspection XMLs) much of this problem is also solved, of course. Anyway, all this stuff is for the maintainers to decide. Of course. The GSEAL work is an initial step to make this refactoring process easier. GSEAL is great, yes. (thank you Lanedo) [CUT] I don't believe that GTK+ needs more cleaning up. Its architecture isn't that flawed at all. But that's your opinion as someone who is not and has not been a maintainer. Talking to the maintainers is actually how I formulated my opinion. Yes (Gtk+ isn't a very exciting project to join, which is I think part of the problem here). [CUT] I think NASA had a lot more people working for them than the GTK+ project and the GSEAL work is quite comprehensive. Now what if we'd make Gtk+ a more exciting project to join? :-) psst. Vala (I'm not saying it's the holy grail, but it is exciting) At one point Imendio labs time (1/2 a day per week) was used by the whole company for some months to JUST do sealing and we are still not quite done. Thank you Lanedo! (the new Imendio) I think it's untrue to say that GTK+ needs more years of cleanups before it can start receiving innovation. Innovation can always be done, but if each time you want to do it you really want to refactor the code base before you start, that dampens your efforts and costs time to work around. Tracker is no different here. It has had a lot of clean ups before it started getting any innovation. That's true, fair enough. We did, however, innovate Tracker in parallel with the massive cleanups that we did. And we're still in that process. I call Tracker 0.7 and upcoming 0.8 an entirely new product than 0.6 [CUT] At some point you have to clean up your code base, that's been the case in every project I have worked on. I don't think it is a bad thing that GTK+ is released just more cleaned up, but others disagree and want 3.0 to have x, y and z major new features. Yeah, I guess I'm one of those guys ;) Or, if 3.0 is going to be GSEAL and cleanups: to start with 4.0 and drastically innovate, change and develop it (and don't fear API changes anymore at all) and throw 3.0 in maintenance. Same for GLib Gdk. Kinda like how the 1.x - 2.0 transition was. I think 2.0 was great for Gtk+, and I think Gtk+ needs another one of those innovative periods. 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 09:03 +, Martyn Russell wrote: At some point you have to clean up your code base, that's been the case in every project I have worked on. I don't think it is a bad thing that GTK+ is released just more cleaned up, but others disagree and want 3.0 to have x, y and z major new features. The problem is that you'll need another ABI break to do major refactoring. GSEAL() alone won't be enough, even if it's an initial part of it. GSEAL should be part of refactoring, not a reason to release. Now you've done the GSEAL() work then we could do bigger work in a branch before releasing an ABI breaking release (as stable) that gives people nothing but the expectation of another future ABI break, meaning that it won't be used much anyway. -- murr...@murrayc.com www.murrayc.com www.openismus.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Hi, Richard Stallman wrote: Software freedom is a means to furthering our vision of providing technology to all, regardless of means, physical and technical capability or culture. Freedom can lead to more available technology, but it is vital in its own right. It is little benefit to have technology available if the price of using it is your freedom. That is why we write free replacements for existing proprietary software. To draw a parallel with slavery (hyperbole, I know, but humour me): Is it enough to say you're free now for a society to be just? Is the goal of freedom for all a sufficient vision, especially when that goal is (more or less) accomplished today? Freedom from slavery is a means to an end, the end being a just society with no racial discrimination and equal opportunity for all. I am speculating, but I imagine there were a great many slaves who, once they had obtained their freedom, were reminiscent for the day when it was their owner's responsibility to take care of them. In the same way, freedom for computer users is a means to an end - that end being that we provide a better computing environment than proprietary alternatives, and not simply a functional free environment. If a computer user can be free, but will end up with an inferior computing environment because of it, he may welcome returning to a proprietary environment, as many Mac OS X users free software developers have. I'm just saying, that while user freedom is vital, it is insufficient as a vision for the GNOME project. 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Hello, The GTK+ GSEAL work is almost done [1], and the cleaning work have been started in the 2-90 branch [2] I think that we only need more hands to do all the remaining job :) The good news is that you don't need to be a expert to help removing deprecated code or moving GSEAL'd members to private structures, like this commit [3] Best regards [1] http://live.gnome.org/GTK%2B/3.0/PendingSealings [2] http://git.gnome.org/browse/gtk+/log/?h=gtk-2-90 [3] http://git.gnome.org/browse/gtk+/commit/?h=gtk-2-90id=16be7293e6a4eab760aef3eb7283943bb1bbdefb -- Javier Jardón Cabezas ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On 24/02/10 10:11, Murray Cumming wrote: On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 09:03 +, Martyn Russell wrote: At some point you have to clean up your code base, that's been the case in every project I have worked on. I don't think it is a bad thing that GTK+ is released just more cleaned up, but others disagree and want 3.0 to have x, y and z major new features. The problem is that you'll need another ABI break to do major refactoring. GSEAL() alone won't be enough, even if it's an initial part of it. GSEAL should be part of refactoring, not a reason to release. I think it is important to do releases when you have progress in the project not just because you have some new shiny feature to give to people. For 3.0 I can see why you want to have *something* more than a cleaner code base of course but I quite like the idea of a GTK+ which feels much more solid. I suppose this comes down to if you think 3.0 should have the sort of changes 1.x-2.x had or not? Now you've done the GSEAL() work then we could do bigger work in a branch before releasing an ABI breaking release (as stable) that gives people nothing but the expectation of another future ABI break, meaning that it won't be used much anyway. Of course. But an ABI break is always better than an API break and if recompiling is all that's really needed, the effort by the developer linking with GTK+ is really quite minimal (compared to the 1.x-2.x work that was required when I ported all my apps back then). -- Regards, Martyn ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 11:07 +, Martyn Russell wrote: On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 09:03 +, Martyn Russell wrote: [CUT] I think it is important to do releases when you have progress in the project not just because you have some new shiny feature to give to people. I'm more in favor of releasing based on a set of features, to be honest. Otherwise you inflate the value of a release for your audience. For 3.0 I can see why you want to have *something* more than a cleaner code base of course but I quite like the idea of a GTK+ which feels much more solid. For 3.0, sure. But I think we shouldn't let 4.0's developments be blocked by it. Innovating is too important for that, in my opinion. Also, 4.0 should be a whole lot more exciting to join than 3.0 is in my opinion. I suppose this comes down to if you think 3.0 should have the sort of changes 1.x-2.x had or not? I'm not sure about 3.0, but as mentioned earlier I do think GTK+ could use another such transition period of innovation and experimenting, yes. Now you've done the GSEAL() work then we could do bigger work in a branch before releasing an ABI breaking release (as stable) that gives people nothing but the expectation of another future ABI break, meaning that it won't be used much anyway. Of course. But an ABI break is always better than an API break and if recompiling is all that's really needed, the effort by the developer linking with GTK+ is really quite minimal (compared to the 1.x-2.x work that was required when I ported all my apps back then). This sudden effort that application developers had to do didn't only have downsides: It made many people improve their oold code, they drastically improved their UIs. It made GNOME a much better desktop. And it created new kinds of innovation in many areas. The same thing happens with the decay of CORBA and the introduction of D-Bus. The emerging D-Bus inspired for example Telepathy (and a nice symbiosis came to be). Sometimes destruction is a good thing. It makes it possible for new weeds to grow, and it cleans up the mess. That doesn't mean I always advocate starting over. But I think GNOME needs a new perspective for next few years: Technology is changing. Perspectives are changing. And we'd be missing the train in a big way if we let mobile slip (as we are, atm). 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Hi, Murray Cumming wrote: On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 11:07 +, Martyn Russell wrote: I think it is important to do releases when you have progress in the project not just because you have some new shiny feature to give to people. Yes, releases are good, but we don't have to call them stable. While the abstract stay stable vs innovate discussion is interesting, I'm interested in hearing what kinds of features people would add if, tomorrow, someone said OK - out with the crack-pipes, let's turn the funky feature dial up to 100. What features/removal of bugs are desired for GTK+? I've been hearing: * more flexibility for the developer * easier theming (CSS theming, nice effects, make it easy to ship get themes) * easier creation of new widgets * a great canvas widget * enable rendering of widgets in a scene graph * integration of Webkit * enable easy animations (whatever this means) * a rocking IDE that makes it as easy to create visually attractive apps as it is on Mac I'm not sure if any of these are sufficiently well defined to be easy to accomplish - nor am I sure if doing all of these would make it really nice for a developer. I don't know if I'm an outlier, but what's always annoyed me about UI programming in GTK+ is container widgets, and the need for me to worry about them in the IDE. I don't understand why I can't drag drop widgets, and have the IDE take care of deciding what container widgets I need, and integrate basic concepts like alignment HIG compliance the way the Mac form builder works. 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 13:04 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: Hi, Murray Cumming wrote: On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 11:07 +, Martyn Russell wrote: I think it is important to do releases when you have progress in the project not just because you have some new shiny feature to give to people. Yes, releases are good, but we don't have to call them stable. While the abstract stay stable vs innovate discussion is interesting, I'm interested in hearing what kinds of features people would add if, tomorrow, someone said OK - out with the crack-pipes, let's turn the funky feature dial up to 100. What features/removal of bugs are desired for GTK+? How about this stuff? (it's a far more simple object system) http://gitorious.org/dova How about a pluggable reference collecting garbage collector? We all want to solve this cyclic references stuff in Vala, having to mark things as weak. And since it would be pluggable, it wouldn't be harmful for people who don't like garbage collectors. How about having .vapi files for all of Gtk+ interfaces and classes? How about finally moving GtkTreeModel out of Gtk+ and into GLib using a proper collection framework? Something like this: http://git.codethink.co.uk/?p=glib;a=shortlog;h=collections I'm sure many people have been experimenting similarly. I've been hearing: * more flexibility for the developer * easier theming (CSS theming, nice effects, make it easy to ship get themes) Right, with the new JavaScript and G-I stuff this is going to be great. * easier creation of new widgets * a great canvas widget * enable rendering of widgets in a scene graph * integration of Webkit Yes, let's make a GtkWebkit as part of standard Gtk+ 4.0 * enable easy animations (whatever this means) * a rocking IDE that makes it as easy to create visually attractive apps as it is on Mac Great proposals, yes. [CUT] 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Hi all, I think that this sort of discussion belongs to the gtk-devel mailing list, besides, all of this nice to have have been discussed in the past but none has actually stepped up to write actual code (as Martyn says, everytime you start writting something, you hit the legacy wall). The point that I'm trying to make is that, unless somebody steps up to implement some of those advancements and seriously push them for inclusion, this discussion is not really going anywhere. -- Cheers, Alberto Ruiz ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 12:41 +, Alberto Ruiz wrote: Hi all, I think that this sort of discussion belongs to the gtk-devel mailing list, besides, all of this nice to have have been discussed in the past but none has actually stepped up to write actual code (as Martyn says, everytime you start writting something, you hit the legacy wall). Ignore the legacy wall and allow major API and ABI breaks. It's time. The point that I'm trying to make is that, unless somebody steps up to implement some of those advancements and seriously push them for inclusion, this discussion is not really going anywhere. Sorry but, you are absolutely wrong about nobody stepping up to implement those advancements: o. Dova-core and Vala's dova patches are written and exists. o. The collection objects are written and exists. Both as a GLib branch and in the form of libgee (but in GLib nobody uses it because libgee can't be a dependency on GLib, as it would be circular. And the mindset also isn't that collections should be used over C-only list types - which is why you see with GVariant the introduction of yet another iterable thing in GLib -) o. A webkit GTK+ component is written and exists o. The .vapi files for GTK+ already exist, they just need to be added to the tree of GTK+, and an approval should be given by GTK+'s maintainers to allow .vala to be used as language for future GTK+ development. Every single thing I mentioned in my previous E-mail exists. The code isn't the problem. The availability of experts isn't the problem. The problem is that GTK+'s development style is it must be stable, you can't ever break the API nor ABI. This scares the young experts away. And since this discussion matters for nothing less than the very relevance of GTK+ and GNOME in future, I think it should be held at the level of GNOME. It also concerns far more than just GTK+ itself. But people might have different opinions on that. 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On 02/24/2010 01:05 AM, Richard Stallman wrote: Software freedom is a means to furthering our vision of providing technology to all, regardless of means, physical and technical capability or culture. Freedom can lead to more available technology, but it is vital in its own right. It is little benefit to have technology available if the price of using it is your freedom. That is why we write free replacements for existing proprietary software. Richard is a purist, of course, but I do wish that gnome would beat the freedom drum more, something like this: Gnome, the Free Desktop: Free to Use, Free to Share, Free to Change or Gnome: The Desktop of the Free or, more hiply, Gnome: Own Your Code. Own Your Data. Own Your Desktop! Really, this is the only thing that truly distinguishes Gnome from the practical alternatives like MS, Apple. (Maybe a footnote could say ...and less obscure than Xfce, hah hah.) The current slogan of Made to Share is vaguely cool in a way that developers can appreciate, but I think it's meaningless as a tool for roping in new users. Just my 2 cents. - Mike ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 11:16 +0100, Dave Neary wrote: Hi, Richard Stallman wrote: Software freedom is a means to furthering our vision of providing technology to all, regardless of means, physical and technical capability or culture. Freedom can lead to more available technology, but it is vital in its own right. It is little benefit to have technology available if the price of using it is your freedom. That is why we write free replacements for existing proprietary software. To draw a parallel with slavery (hyperbole, I know, but humour me): Is it enough to say you're free now for a society to be just? Is the goal of freedom for all a sufficient vision, especially when that goal is (more or less) accomplished today? Freedom from slavery is a means to an end, the end being a just society with no racial discrimination and equal opportunity for all. I am speculating, but I imagine there were a great many slaves who, once they had obtained their freedom, were reminiscent for the day when it was their owner's responsibility to take care of them. In the same way, freedom for computer users is a means to an end - that end being that we provide a better computing environment than proprietary alternatives, and not simply a functional free environment. If a computer user can be free, but will end up with an inferior computing environment because of it, he may welcome returning to a proprietary environment, as many Mac OS X users free software developers have. I'm just saying, that while user freedom is vital, it is insufficient as a vision for the GNOME project. This is very well said Dave. While freedom is an important factor in life, it is not the only defining factor for quality of life. At the end of the day, most of us want a certain level of comfort too. We need a strong vision and strategy to become best of breed in software. Merely being free will only please the ascetic who can live of mental joy, but it will never capture a significant market, which in the end just means that you'll slowly become irrelevant. Ruben ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 08:30 -0500, Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak wrote: On 02/24/2010 01:05 AM, Richard Stallman wrote: Software freedom is a means to furthering our vision of providing technology to all, regardless of means, physical and technical capability or culture. Freedom can lead to more available technology, but it is vital in its own right. It is little benefit to have technology available if the price of using it is your freedom. That is why we write free replacements for existing proprietary software. Richard is a purist, of course, but I do wish that gnome would beat the freedom drum more, something like this: Gnome, the Free Desktop: Free to Use, Free to Share, Free to Change or Gnome: The Desktop of the Free or, more hiply, Gnome: Own Your Code. Own Your Data. Own Your Desktop! Really, this is the only thing that truly distinguishes Gnome from the practical alternatives like MS, Apple. (Maybe a footnote could say ...and less obscure than Xfce, hah hah.) How about a healthy dose of ambition and aim for becoming the best platform of choice, regardless of the freeness? Trying to win a race where you're behind by competing on another level probably won't win us much. Especially because the broader audience generally puts more value to the qualities where we fall behind (and unfortunately doesn't have trouble sleeping because of a lack of freedom). We're already the most free and open platform out there. Let's focus on how we can become the best platform overall... Ruben ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
2010/2/24 Juanjo Marin juanj.ma...@juntadeandalucia.es: Possibly Alberto is right. Anyway, the original message of this thread is that GNOME doesn't have long term goals. It seems that the improvement of GTK attact a lot of attention.(BTW, Alberto's presentation on GUADEC about this is _REALLY_ a good starting point [1], it is worth to revisit it). Thanks a lot Juanjo, there's a point I wanted to make with that talk, which is, there's _A LOT_ that can be achieved and improved about the situation without committing a single line of code to Gtk+. * Modernize and consolidate the documentation (focused on empowering the developer to achieve interesting tasks rather than explaining the details of the API) * Improving the development experience. * Releasing installers for the more stable set of bindings on the non free platforms * Integration with other IDEs (Eclipse, XCode, VisualStudio) The real problem we have is a shortage of developers, the only way to solve that long term is creating mindshare, and we have to be aggressive and radical in our thinking if we want to achieve more with less. In general, attracting the huge developer community out of the Linux desktop landscape and attracting them to our platform, and eventually to the whole free stack/OS. [1] http://live.gnome.org/GUADEC/2008/Slides?action=AttachFiledo=viewtarget=marketing_gtk_Guadec2008.pdf -- Un saludo, Alberto Ruiz ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Em 24-02-2010 10:16, Dave Neary escreveu: Richard Stallman wrote: Software freedom is a means to furthering our vision of providing technology to all, regardless of means, physical and technical capability or culture. Freedom can lead to more available technology, but it is vital in its own right. It is little benefit to have technology available if the price of using it is your freedom. That is why we write free replacements for existing proprietary software. To draw a parallel with slavery (hyperbole, I know, but humour me): Is it enough to say you're free now for a society to be just? Is the goal of freedom for all a sufficient vision, especially when that goal is (more or less) accomplished today? Freedom from slavery is a means to an end, the end being a just society with no racial discrimination and equal opportunity for all. Freedom is a mean means that it could be replaced by another mean, which means that you'd have a society that is just if you consider freedom an injustice. Since freedom is quite the opposite of an injustice, then said society simply can't be considered just. As a consequence, a society needs to include Freedom in order to be called just. Corolary: freedom is a cornerstone mean for a just society If a computer user can be free, but will end up with an inferior computing environment because of it, he may welcome returning to a proprietary environment, as many Mac OS X users free software developers have. Every day I look at a Nokia N900 I feel exactly like that, tempted to return to a proprietary environment because it has a way superior computing environment than my OpenMoko Neo Freerunner. I have been strong, fortunately. Even though this phone is not 100% free, it's the next best thing for a free phone (or tracking device). I'm just saying, that while user freedom is vital, it is insufficient as a vision for the GNOME project. Assuming (which I doubt) that it is insufficient, open access is way more undefined and subject to conclusions which frequently lead to no freedom, so I don't view it as an interesting definition. Perhaps this can be a middle ground: a superior computing environment that gives you full freedom. Rui ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:04:44 +0100 Dave Neary wrote: What features/removal of bugs are desired for GTK+? Though that may seem boring and not shiny enough to excite people, my personal number one missing feature is general purpose undo/redo support at a low level in the stack. Currently, some applications have undo, other don't. Amongst those that have it, they often only have it for a small number of specific widgets (e.g. GtkTextView) or actions, and the code is often copy/pasted around. If it's not copy/pasted around, risks are that the behaviour gets inconsistent amongst applications etc. I absolutely agree with [1] that missing undo support is one of the biggest current usability flaws, and I think the stack should encourage its implementation in applications by offering a nice framework for it. Holger [1] http://www.alistapart.com/articles/neveruseawarning ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Hi, Juanjo Marin wrote: Possibly Alberto is right. Anyway, the original message of this thread is that GNOME doesn't have long term goals. It seems that the improvement of GTK attact a lot of attention. Proposed short-to-mid-term goal: Make the GNOME platform exciting to alpha-dog application developers thought leaders. Proposed community mantra: Beautiful computing freedom Proposed project vision: Hidden in plain sight: Everyone using GNOME, no-one noticing The thing about a vision (which is missing here) is that it easily makes it easier for you to choose the right path at the fork in the road. Think of the vision of the Palm Pilot as a great example - easy to remember, and informs every decision: Fits in a shirt pocket, syncs seamlessly with PC, fast and easy to use, no more than $299. What functionality is crucial? Seamless sync. Do we need to include a certain component? What's its effect on the BOM? Can we still retail at $299? Effect on size? Will it still fit in a shirt pocket? If not, no. The hidden in plain sight vision has an element of that, but then it doesn't provide any use vision, which is the biggest part of the problem we have on the user interface. Are we a middleware platform project? Or do we still produce compelling user interfaces? If so, for whom, in what circumstances? We probably could have had moblin be GNOME Netbook. We probably could have had Maemo be GNOME Smartphone. Or Sugar be GNOME Education. We probably could have had MeeGo be GNOME Mobile, but the 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 the distributions. 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Hi! I don't know if I'm an outlier, but what's always annoyed me about UI programming in GTK+ is container widgets, and the need for me to worry about them in the IDE. I don't understand why I can't drag drop widgets, and have the IDE take care of deciding what container widgets I need, and integrate basic concepts like alignment HIG compliance the way the Mac form builder works. Start hacking on the glade3 module! Tristan send a call for help by blog recently. There is really just lack of people wanting to improve glade in this area. This has nothing to do with GTK+ (or only very litte). 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Hi, Martyn Russell wrote: On 22/02/10 19:27, Dave Neary wrote: 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. Well, not just Maemo/Nokia. MeeGo, for example, uses Qt as the preferred toolkit, although GTK+ and Clutter will remain as supported platform components; moblin2's interface was primarily Clutter based, from what I can tell; OpenMoko moved away from GTK+ toward Qt Enlightenment during their self-destruction; Android is not based on anything GTK+-like. GTK+ is hanging in there in the LiMo stack, though. Are there any in-production to-be-continued GTK+-based software platforms out there besides ALP and Samsung's LiMo phones? Dare I say that the developer engagement from both of those platforms has left something to be desired - and the good citizens of mobile GTK+ (Nokia Intel) appear to be moving away from the toolkit as a core component of the platform. Objectively, the number of companies interested in GTK+ on mobile appears to be decreasing from the very promising situation we found ourselves in 5 to 6 years ago. 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Hi, Richard Stallman wrote: 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. Software freedom is a means to furthering our vision of providing technology to all, regardless of means, physical and technical capability or culture. This is why the GNOME project has always been concerned about design, usability, internationalisation and localisation, accessibility, and as you point out, user freedom. Freedom is not useful unless people have the means to benefit from it. 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
2010/2/23 Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org: Hi, Martyn Russell wrote: On 22/02/10 19:27, Dave Neary wrote: 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. Objectively, the number of companies interested in GTK+ on mobile appears to be decreasing from the very promising situation we found ourselves in 5 to 6 years ago. I'd like to point out something though. As promising as the situation was, I don't think they seriously invested in the toolkit itself AFACT, during all this years RedHat (through mclasen and alexl) and individual contributors on their spare time have been the only ones doing a serious investment in the toolkit. There was never a full time maintainer dedicated to make sure that GTK+ was moving forward to support those mobile platforms (and to help mclasen on the hard task of reviewing patches and making releases for both GLib and GTK+). To be honest, I don't think that's the kind of interest we expected. I often hear complaints about how the RedHat guys turn down patches from other contributors (mostly from members of companies competing with them), but I yet have to see any of those companies investing some of their resources on helping to review all those pending patches waiting in bugzilla and making sure they have a way to get their own patches upstream. My bottom line is that I don't think that in reality the MeeGo news are going to make any difference to GTK+ (I do wonder, however, what are Intel plans on Clutter long term wise) -- Un saludo, Alberto Ruiz ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On 23/02/10 12:36, Alberto Ruiz wrote: 2010/2/23 Dave Nearydne...@gnome.org: I'd like to point out something though. As promising as the situation was, I don't think they seriously invested in the toolkit itself AFACT, during all this years RedHat (through mclasen and alexl) and individual contributors on their spare time have been the only ones doing a serious investment in the toolkit. There was never a full time maintainer dedicated to make sure that GTK+ was moving forward to support those mobile platforms (and to help mclasen on the hard task of reviewing patches and making releases for both GLib and GTK+). To be honest, I don't think that's the kind of interest we expected. Actually, Nokia invested quite heavily in GTK+. Imendio/Lanedo had more developers than Red Hat working on it full time over the past years (I could be wrong here). We had Mitch, Kris, Tim, Sven and some work from others at times in the company (this doesn't include personal time involvement which we have recently seen a great deal of from people like Carlos Garnacho on the MPX branch). I often hear complaints about how the RedHat guys turn down patches from other contributors (mostly from members of companies competing with them), but I yet have to see any of those companies investing some of their resources on helping to review all those pending patches waiting in bugzilla and making sure they have a way to get their own patches upstream. Actually, I think that the Red Hat maintainers of the toolkit had an interest in stability (for ISVs) and that stifled development. As such developing anything in GTK+ takes a lot longer than it should and that's why it is always hard to get into development there or to fix something. This has long been the internal politic of GTK+. I am perhaps not the best person to comment here, Tim for example, has had much more personal and professional involvement in the toolkit and is much better to make comment on this. My view here is just from a very casual contributor watching over a number of years in a company that has GTK+ expertise. My bottom line is that I don't think that in reality the MeeGo news are going to make any difference to GTK+ (I do wonder, however, what are Intel plans on Clutter long term wise) I don't either. There are a lot of companies using it internally that never tell public communities about its use of GTK+. British Telecom is one of them. I remember when Owen was setting up the projects page for gtk.org and I wanted to submit our use cases back then, but internally they didn't want to make it public in case customers were worried about the fact that we were using open source. There are thousands of applications using GTK+ too, let's not forget that, what are they going to move to instead if they don't use GTK+? I also thought that Andrew Savory's point was incredibly pertinent. As a company we do receive requests for GTK+ support, so I don't think it is fair to say that GTK+ is dead. -- Regards, Martyn ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 11:42 PM, Andrew Savory andrew.sav...@limofoundation.org wrote: Perhaps we should reach out to the mobile and embedded community and ask them to contribute e.g. how to get GTK running on a smartphone? Getting a few of those guys over to GUADEC might stimulate some interesting conversations ... I think that's a great idea and I'm happy to personally extend them an invitation if you can help me with the list of people that you'd like to see participate. Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
Hi! Actually, I think that the Red Hat maintainers of the toolkit had an interest in stability (for ISVs) and that stifled development. As such developing anything in GTK+ takes a lot longer than it should and that's why it is always hard to get into development there or to fix something. This has long been the internal politic of GTK+. Well, I think as GTK+ is really deep down in the stack it's stability and code quality is much more important than adding new features. When you look at some of the older GTK+ code (e.g. GtkNotebook) you see what happens without responsible maintainership. I know from personal experience that it is difficult to get stuff into GTK+. It involves poking a lot at the maintainer(s), actually it was always mclasen who committed and commented things. Still, it's possible to get new features in (GtkToolPalette, action-widget for GtkNotebook). I think it should be even easier for bug-fixes. What I see as a bigger problem is that the chance to clean things up for 3.0 might pass because not enough people are working on this. 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 13:20 +0100, Alberto Garcia wrote: On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 09:37:46PM +, Martyn Russell 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. Admittedly the run-time type checking in GObject adds some overhead, and it's not hard to see g_type_check_instance_is_a() among the most called functions. This check isn't strictly necessary for object method invocation (which is what Andy was talking about). Especially if your high-performance class isn't using the macro G_TYPE_INSTANCE_GET_PRIVATE but instead has a pointer to the private in its `GObject *parent' struct. The I'm feeling lucky Google for that is: http://sigquit.wordpress.com/2009/02/13/avoid-g_type_instance_get_private-in-gobjects/ However during my work in Maemo I have *never* seen that being an actual problem. When there is a performance problem directly noticeable by the end user the root cause is elsewhere (which may include, of course, other parts of GTK). Right Now, this probably doesn't have much value anymore, but as a funny side note I even remember back in 2000 or so that a friend of mine compared the performance of a C-based object system (inspired by GLib) with that of C++, and -to my surprise back then- found out that the former was noticeably faster. To my surprise can in some cases virtual machines be faster than native code at certain tasks, including their object system. Well, not to my surprise as for many of them it's explained how this works. It's fun to use as a counter argument when yet again one of those ranting anti virtual machine people comes along. 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
El mar, 23-02-2010 a las 17:02 +0100, Philip Van Hoof escribió: On 23/02/10 12:36, Alberto Ruiz wrote: I often hear complaints about how the RedHat guys turn down patches from other contributors (mostly from members of companies competing with them), Well if that's the case, then that's something to be madly angry about. I don't know nor do I claim this to be the case. I have not seen this being the case, not for Gtk+ (I'm not involved in its development). Having a person in the position of maintainer while being pushed by his company to reject patches from competitors, is more or less the kind of situation that I'd even propose to actively ban from GNOME. Hold your horses right there. I don't know where are you reading any claim like that. No one has claimed that someone is under pressure by his company to reject patches from competitors, as you seem to interpret -- please be careful with your words. It's most damaging for our goals, it's viral and it instantly murders any interest in our development platform by the (other) mobile vendors. It's also damaging to start witch hunting out of the blue :) Claudio ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 18:38 +0200, Claudio Saavedra wrote: El mar, 23-02-2010 a las 17:02 +0100, Philip Van Hoof escribió: Hey Claudio, On 23/02/10 12:36, Alberto Ruiz wrote: I often hear complaints about how the RedHat guys turn down patches from other contributors (mostly from members of companies competing with them), Hold your horses right there. I don't know where are you reading any claim like that. No one has claimed that someone is under pressure by his company to reject patches from competitors, as you seem to interpret -- please be careful with your words. That contradicts with what you quote from Alberto: I often hear complaints about how the RedHat guys turn down patches from other contributors (mostly from members of companies competing with them) Those people complaining are apparently claiming (to Alberto) that they perceive this to be the case. I wrote, however: I don't know nor do I claim this to be the case. I have not seen this being the case, not for Gtk+ (I'm not involved in its development). That means that I said that I don't perceive it like that. I don't know how much more careful in wording one can be. It is true, however, that it's hard to get a review for certain core components (I'm thinking about the gobject.c performance improvements, which took almost a full year to get any reaction). This is an area for improvement (it would help if more people would be invited to help with said maintenance, I think). 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 16:53 +, Martyn Russell wrote: Hi Martyn, Don't be confused: most of this reply isn't directed at you personally. On 23/02/10 16:09, Dodji Seketeli wrote: Le mar. 23 févr. 2010 à 14:12:47 (+), Martyn Russell a écrit: Actually, I think that the Red Hat maintainers of the toolkit had an interest in stability (for ISVs) and that stifled development. As such developing anything in GTK+ takes a lot longer than it should and that's why it is always hard to get into development there or to fix something. This has long been the internal politic of GTK+. Wasn't it possible to develop the new things in branches to showcase your ideas and tell the world about those new features? Yes and it still is, see the MPX branch, the GSEAL work was also started in a branch and many things are done that way. Just to make things clear, this is a real question, not an attempt to point finger or anything like that. I am asking because, even in layers like X.org where compatibility is key, trying things in branches and showing the world proved to have worked quite well. When talking to some of the core maintainers, they often say they want to refactor things internally in GTK+ to make maintaining it easier and getting new people into the toolkit easier. What are we waiting for? The Gods? Ideology? Let's be serious.. Just today on #gnome-hackers, I saw someone interested in getting into GTK+ development and he said it was really hard. I agree. I agree with this person too. It is extraordinary hard: that's not good. Not at all. Johannes makes a really good point too. At some point you could probably say that GTK+ was _THE_ exciting project to work on and a lot of code got in that should have had more reviews and perhaps that's why it needs cleaning up in places now. Comon! How many years of cleaning up does a team need unless it admits that its entire architecture was one big design flaw? I don't believe that GTK+ needs more cleaning up. Its architecture isn't that flawed at all. Let's not be childish and let's be honest about our technology; its future. Not even a mission to the moon ever needed as much years of cleaning up as GTK+ seems to need if you do follow the logic that the GSEAL work is the only big thing a group can do within a year. I think it's untrue to say that GTK+ needs more years of cleanups before it can start receiving innovation. Let's stop being children. No matter how impolite my statements are. GTK+ has also been too exposed to change some of these issues (hence the GSEAL work). I applaud the GSEAL work. It just hasn't been enough for a year or more of work on GTK+: no matter how you look at it, GTK+'s innovation is stalled. To the point that it gets ridiculous. If that statement takes all of my karma, whatever karma means, then it does. So be it. 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
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 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
2010/2/22 Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org: 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 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
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 ar...@gnome.org wrote: 2010/2/22 Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org: 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 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
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 dne...@gnome.org 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 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
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 a...@gnu.org 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 dne...@gnome.org 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 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On 2/22/10 11:27 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org 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. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
2010/2/22 Lefty (石鏡 ) le...@shugendo.org: 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 -- Un saludo, Alberto Ruiz ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
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? ;) -- Regards, Martyn ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
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. -- Regards, Martyn ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
I hesitate to reopen this discussion, frankly. Look at the archives for December and January. On 2/22/10 1:12 PM, Alberto Ruiz ar...@gnome.org wrote: 2010/2/22 Lefty (石鏡 ) le...@shugendo.org: 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 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
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 ar...@gnome.org wrote: 2010/2/22 Lefty (石鏡 ) le...@shugendo.org: 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 ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
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. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
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 -- 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: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap
On Mon, 2010-02-15 at 19:26 +, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote: (This is offlist, but feel free to copy/reply onlist) If you're refering to the switch of certain mobile systems from Gtk to Qt, I think it's a bad idea to call it a loss. Our goal is to give software users freedom. With free versions of Qt, they have freedom. It's nice to see our system being used instead of any other system, and the choice of Qt over Gtk might indeed highlight some technical shortcomings which could be addressed in Gtk, but we still win when they use free versions of Qt. If you're refering to the fact that certain mobile devices have built their own proprietary systems instead of using Gtk, then I agree that this is a loss. Ciaran, My post was more about the need of defining the direction where we want to go. We need to find a way to agree on the areas to be priorized for improvement and figure out how to do as _community_, using all our resources. So, if, for example, we set as priority to be a serious option for mobile computing, we need to have a plan for that (I put this as example, surely biased for the news of today and because the componentized idea I like very much :). I'm happy to see that big companies choose free software, though I must admit I'll be happier it they had choosen GNOME :) --The idea of making components from GNOME applications could make possible to have a Qt frontend for these applications-- Cheers, -- Juanjo Marín ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
