RE: GNOME Nirvana; How to reach it and what to do once we get the re. (Addendum)

[Mark Finlay <sisob eircom net>]

On Fri, 2003-06-13 at 07:03, Murray Cumming Comneon com wrote:
> > From: Wayne Schuller [mailto:k_wayne linuxpower org] 
> > Rather than officially "release" the apps for the platform,
> > we should be trying to create a more "fluid" environment where we
> > support and promote the apps that make best use of the Gnome platform.
> 
> All of this seems to ignore the issue of release management. Development
> needs to be coordinated. People need to know what they should work on.
> 
> I'm repeating myself. People who are not maintainers do not seem to
> understand how the GNOME release process works, or why it is necessary. The
> release team are currently trying to document it more so people can see that
> there's more to being part of GNOME Desktop than being a name on a list.

I agree with Murray and disagree with Iain - I think that it is very
important for Gnome to work in a unified way. There are always going to
be loads of gnome and gtk apps - but the ones that are developed in
gnome.org should be incorperated into the desktop (with some obvious
excpetions like office software).

Iain said it himself I think: Distros don't have to include all of the
software we distribute. And the fact is that 99.9% of people use gnome
from a distro not from ftp.gnome.org - but by including important apps
in the desktop we give the distros an option of using these blessed
integrated apps.

I've always hated the way Linux felt like a jicksaw puzzle of differernt
pieces that do not work properly together. I hated when I installed SuSE
or Mandrake and there were 3 browsers and 5 e-mail clients - and each of
them with some nice features - but none of them with all the features I
needed. I always wondered why the hell there wasn't just one good e-mail
client.

Gnome2 has changed this for me - we are slowly creating one good way to
do everything. This doesn't stop people going elsewhere if they want to,
but it does mean that for everyone else they can sit down and not have
to go looking for software for hours just to get a decent e-mail client,
or IM client, or image viewer etc...

I could go on about this for hours, but I won't so I'll just say
"Integration is better" - both for users and for developers.

-- 
Mark Finlay <sisob eircom net>