Re: Improving Fifth Toe

[Christian Rose <menthos gnome org>]

fre 2003-05-30 klockan 23.50 skrev Will LaShell:
> > I'm sure Fifth Toe would be taken more seriously as an official GNOME
> > release if:
> > 
> > * The Fifth Toe website was hosted on gnome.org. Why on earth isn't it?
> 
> Honestly because we would be hitting a moving target with the website.
> The Fifth Toe site is set up to make it very easy for us to build the
> releases and know what versions of what to get. www.gnome.org has been a
> moving target that jeff has been -valiantly- trying to get the site up
> and running.  When he does and the web situation is more stable we'll
> poke on the system administrators to get the Fifth Toe site up on a
> gnome.org server. As it is, it'll happily sit on my colocated server and
> serve up the pages we have.

Certainly, I can understand that there are benefits of having the site
on a server of your own, but I don't think it would harm asking the
gnome.org admins if you could get assigned the name fifthtoe.gnome.org
or some such. I doubt that would be a problem, I guess it's only a
matter of asking, but I'm quite sure that it would help giving some more
credibility to the Fifth Toe release if the current server at least used
a gnome.org subdomain name.


> > * The Fifth Toe website had some even remote similarities with other
> > gnome.org pages. Currently, I see none.
> 
> Same answer.  Even if they matched now, they wouldn't when the site (
> soon )  changes.

If you prefer waiting for the new site design, putting a GNOME logo
somewhere on the current pages in the mean time probably wouldn't hurt.
Currently there is none, and I doubt we have a problem with the GNOME
logo changing again anytime soon.


> > * There was a detailed explanation of what Fifth Toe is and isn't on the
> > Fifth Toe website. Currently, that information is close to zero (one
> > sentence hidden somewhere). For example, mentioning that it is a
> > collection of useful GNOME software and not exclusively a staging area
> > for inclusion in core GNOME would help solve a common misunderstanding.
> 
> We can add more explanations to the site. It's interesting that
> basically people are split into 2 groups when it comes to Fifth Toe.
> They either know what it is.. or they don't. Fewer seem to have a "grey
> area" idea of it.  But this is certainly resolveable easily.

Good to hear.


> > * There was a detailed explanation of inclusion criteria and what other
> > guidelines apply for candidate software. While I certainly don't believe
> > there should be as stringent criteria used as for inclusion in GNOME
> > core, I certainly believe there should be some criteria listed, if only
> > to give some confidence that it isn't just a random bunch of software
> > submitted, and that it has passed some level of suitability test.
> > One example of such criteria could be that the application needs to use
> > GNOME technologies. That's certainly not a very strict requirement, but
> > if listed it could give some level of confidence that not just any
> > application belongs here.
> 
> This has been in flux and discussion. Typically we have been responding
> to individual developers requests when they submit their apps and they
> don't meet what we feel are the requirements to be in Fifth Toe. The bar
> for Fifth Toe is set pretty low intentionally. It basically should have
> a decent user interface, be stable or have a stable release, and have an
> author that responds to inquiries.

Yeah, I'm not questioning that. What I suggested was for those
requirements to be formally listed on the web page, so that others, not
only the maintainers, also see that the applications fulfill some basic
requirements and have been triaged some way.


> > One example of a voluntary guideline could be that it's helpful if the
> > application does use GNOME resources such as GNOME cvs and GNOME
> > Bugzilla, to aid accessibility, usability, documentation, translation,
> > and QA efforts. While it certainly shouldn't be a requirement, it might
> > make a suitable guideline. So would also recommending the use of the HIG
> > be.
>
> I have a big problem with requesting they use GNOME cvs and Bugzilla. 

I didn't suggest that. I suggested you put that as a recommendation, not
as a requirement. Perhaps I was unclear.

I certainly understand that requesting to use GNOME resources will put
too much of a burden on many current Fifth Toe application developers.
What I meant with my suggestion was for it to be a guideline along the
lines of "it can be beneficial if you use GNOME resources, since that
aids potential accessibility, usability, documentation, translation, and
QA contributions and efforts".
I've been in contact with some Fifth Toe application maintainers in the
past and asked them if they could consider moving to GNOME cvs so that
we could contribute translations from the GTP. Few of them seemed to
even know that they could in fact ask for getting the project imported
into GNOME cvs, and that such a move would help us help them. I'm hoping
such a guideline on the site would help bring that awareness, even
though there would still be no formal requirement.


> While it is nice perhaps for -us-  it incurs a cost that isn't always
> necessary on the application developer. Plus to get into cvs and
> bugzilla you have to have some sort of presence already etc. John Fleck
> has talked with me before about working on documentation for Fifth Toe
> applications and at some point we need to work on that. For now just
> getting applications going that are not "core" desktop applications has
> been an interesting challenge.
> 
> > * There was some publically posted and coherent description of all
> > packages and information on why they have been included. Currently,
> > information about the packages seems to only be provided by the
> > submitters and is more often than not very lacking. Also, the grounds
> > for inclusion would be good to know, besides "someone submitted this".
> > I.e. a motivation of "the Foo application is one of the best frobnicator
> > applications available for GNOME, and it meets our other criteria and
> > most of our guidelines, therefore it's part of Fifth Toe" would be
> > better than "someone submitted this" or nothing at all. Currently, the
> > list of applications to an outside observer does look quite random
> > without any motivation.
> 
> Well...  if the maintainer themselves aren't motivated enough to add an
> excellent description of a package, why should the Fifth Toe
> coordinators feel obligated to write one for them?

If the application maintainers can't provide all necessary information
including descriptions, even when being friendly reminded about such,
perhaps that should be a ground for not including said applications.


> Even the I have
> personally built and run all but 2 applications on the Fifth Toe site
> and in the releases ( due to the fact I don't have a webcam I can't do
> camorama and the fm tuner card prevents me from doing the radio app ) we
> don't have the familarity with the applications the authors do and I
> don't feel that we should put up a description that is inaccurate. When
> a maintainer requests our help we do give it though.
> 
> Grounds for inclusion do not apply to Fifth Toe like they do for the
> desktop release. Fifth Toe isn't about the "best" choice. Fifth Toe is
> where all software developers are welcome to build a cool GNOME app and
> we'll list it. The desktop release has a set of chosen, blessed specific
> apps and it -needs- to have them. Fifth Toe,  does not. Before I get
> flamed for that comment, and I can hear it already "oh oh but you are
> promoting duplicate apps,"  we do try to funnel work on similar apps
> together and influence them where appropriate.

Great to hear that. All I'm saying is that it would be good to have
those decisions a bit more visible and the whole process a bit more open
to outsiders.


> > * There was some fifth-toe-list gnome org, where things like this and
> > the inclusion of packages in Fifth Toe could be discussed.
> 
> desktop-devel-list is where we've held Fifth Toe discussion to date, and
> I think is entirely on topic and should continue to remain here.

Perhaps. It's just that I haven't seen many Fifth Toe inclusion
discussions here. I would love if such discussions could be more
open/easily available.


> Something not mentioned here was the seeming "lack" of a releases. For
> this I think I would have 2 requests,  basically give the coordinators
> more time to develop and get better at their own release processes, as
> those on the release team know this is NOT a trivial task. We're getting
> better at it, and currently I can only see improvement. We've been
> trying to get to a release every 2 months, with a target of a release
> every month.  This is not easy but we WILL reach it.  It just takes some
> time.

Yeah, a big thanks for all your work getting Fifth Toe releases
together. Fifth Toe was never better. I'm just saying there are still
things to improve.


Thanks,
Christian