Re: who gets in and why, aka the GNOME Desktop inclusion criteria

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

On Wed, 2002-08-28 at 23:58, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> On Wed, 28 Aug 2002, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> 
> > <quote who="Michael Meeks">
> >
> > > On Tue, 2002-08-27 at 01:53, Luis Villa wrote:
> > > > After much discussion[1] these are the standards the release team
> > > > believes we should be using to judge requests for future additions to
> > > > the GNOME Desktop.
> > >
> > > 	And notably ( and presumably ) this is only proposed for adding
> > > applications to a given release team's remit.
> > >
> > > 	All core platform module additions and long term development plans
> > > should be done in a public fashion, purely by hackers using the GEP
> > > process.
> > >
> > > 	It seemed the wording was rather vague there.
> >
> > Hmm, Luis was quite clear when he said "GNOME Desktop", which is a separate
> > entity to the Developer Platform release.
> 
> 	Call me stupid, but I'm still confused ...
> 
> 	It sounds like somewhere along the way it has decided that
> 'hackers using the GEP process' governs which new libraries are
> considered a core part of GNOME and the release team decides which new
> applications get included ... or do I misunderstand what the
> difference between "Desktop" and "Developer Platform" is ?
> 
> 	So .. if I'm not mistaken, why was it decided the release team
> would be the sole arbitrators and that the GEP process is of no use ?

To be honest, the vast majority of it was that action was needed /now/;
we're already in the process of contacting maintainers of new modules, a
process that could not be substantially delayed if we wanted to get any
new modules for 2.2.

Additionally, it was unclear whether or not this was GEP appropriate-
this is not intended and was never intended to apply to libraries or
other 'technical features', which I'd understood to be the GEP's main
role. This was always about user apps, not core development platform, in
other words.

Finally, I'm worried about the appearance to new maintainers. This
document is something we have to present to new maintainers and say
'here's what we think the rules are'. It does have to lay out rules and
regulations, but it also has to be (to a certain extent) a sales doc-
it's got to make it, at the minimum, not look like getting involved in
GNOME is a scary process. Having their first impression be of a fairly
bureaucratic process is not really what I personally want to have to
present to people.

Anyway, despite that last caveat, I'd certainly have no problem with
putting this into a GEP in the near future, if Michael and Havoc feel
that we've misinterpreted the technical focus parts of the 'When is a
GEP needed' part of GEP 0. If GEPs are to remain more technically
focused, then I can make sure that the final version of this on the
website makes it more clear that these are not the standards for
libraries and other technical stuff, and point to GEP 0 as the process
for those types of decisions.

Luis