Re: Proposed: Rhythmbox

["Eugenia Loli-Queru" <eloli hotmail com>]

Joe Marcus Clarke wrote:

 >Why is gnomemeeting part of the core desktop then?  It is quite
>difficult to compile, and adds bulk that I think many users at this
>stage could do without.

Yup. Funnily, this is the one app Patrick wanted to take out of Slackware's
Gnome 2.4.0 too... I tried to convince him to include it as I already had a
working webcam with Linux...

>Certainly we could have Office and Productivity suites to compliment the
>desktop, but I would argue that a media/music player is more essential
>to the desktop than, say, a video conferencing application.

Agreed. Maybe in 5-10 years the standards would have change and it might be
a "standard" thing to do to have webcams integrated to all PCs and people
would use them as videophones worldwide or something. At that point, I would
advocate for such an app to be part of Gnome with the same strength as I do
today for RB. As I said earlier, times change and so the needs change and we
need to constantly re-evaluate what our "costumers" need. But today, I also
find a music player more important than VoIP for most people. In fact, I
would still need Gaim more than VoIP in the core as I and all the people I
know, tend to use IM more than video conf.

Jeff Waugh wrote:

 >Not being included *DOESN'T* mean the application is not available to
users.

No. You only limit it to ~10% of its potential market. That's how big it can
get if it is not included by default.

> We will all continue to use Rhythmbox regardless of its inclusion in the
Desktop.

You will be using it. I will too. But most of new Linux/Unix users won't,
because most people don't bother. If an OS doesn't do what they need, half
of them will leave the OS altogether. The other half will try to download
third party apps but if the OS in question doesn't have binaries ready for
it, half of them won't bother to compile it. So you end-up with 25% of your
users ending up using Rhythmbox. And from these 25%, you will only get a few
percentage of them who they will actually LIKE the app and will do what they
need it to do. Kaboom! You just destroyed not just RB's potential, but the
Gnome multimedia experience as well. The disantvantages of not including
such a needed app with Gnome *outweigh* the ones if you do include it. I
suggest that you do the math.

>TOTEM is convincingly the best media player in the GNOME world

Agreed. However, Totem is not nearly as popular as other apps for the exact
same reason I explained just above.

Bottomline, Gnome needs some multimedia presense for the reasons I explained
in my previous email to Havoc. Be this will happen with Storage, or a
special Totem version that supports with playlists and stuff, or via RB, or
via Bash-is-your-playlist application, it doesn't matter. What matters is
that we need to realize the NEED for it and to provide our "customers" with
whatever we have today. If what we have today is RB and works "well enough
to do the job", ship it.

Maciej Stachowiak, I agree with everything you wrote, really nice posts,
thank you.

Eugenia