Re: Proto initial GNOME 2.6 new modules decision

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Sat, 2004-01-24 at 10:08, Colin Walters wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 16:28, Seth Nickell wrote:
[...]
> > If we want "playing music" to be one of the tasks the GNOME desktop
> > supports, we should include a music player. Rhythmbox is far and away
> > the best music player interface available for GNOME in this designer's
> > opinion. If we *don't* want "playing music" to be one of the tasks the
> > desktop supports, we are crazy and way behind the times.
> 
> I tend to agree with you, personally.  However, the Rhythmbox team has
> recently decided to withdraw our proposal for being included in GNOME
> 2.6. 
> 
> Here's my reasoning:
> 
> 1) Some opposition of release team members
> 2) I'm not sure we'll be able to get GStreamer metadata completely solid
> (especially tag writing) by the release date.  What I'd prefer to do is
> give the GStreamer maintainers a bit less pressure to hack something in
> last-minute, and instead allow them a bit more flexibility to change
> APIs.  I do hope that GStreamer 0.8 (which should be in GNOME 2.6) will
> be solid enough to support an independently-released Rhythmbox 0.8.  
> 3) We have a lot of changes in the pipeline (such as ipod support), most
> of which affect the UI.  Deferring the Rhythmbox 0.8 release perhaps by
> a month will allow us to get all these changes in, instead of punting
> them to much later.
> 4) There's some pretty major bugs with respect to internet radio (in
> particular connecting to a dead iradio site) that are very hard to fix
> with the current GStreamer architecture, and we'll probably have to punt
> to GStreamer 1.0.
> 
> Basically, what it comes down to is that if Rhythmbox is going to be
> included in GNOME, I want it to absolutely *rock*.  Right now I think
> it's pretty good.  But by the time GNOME 2.8 rolls around (and 6mo isn't
> that far away, really!), hopefully we'll be there, and we can have this
> discussion again then :)

*Applause* Really nice mail, Colin, and I like your goals. Very
professional. :-)

Cheers,
Malcolm