Proposed Modules, My Take

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

Hey,

Gotta crank up the proposed module discussion, so here's my take on the
proposed modules as discussed so far. It's my perspective of what the
consensus may be, so may be tinged with a bit of personal bias. Don't be
afraid to use the Calipers of Re-Education on me in reply to this mail. :)

 * gnome-schedule
 * gnome_war_pad

Neither of these modules have notified the release-team of regular releases
during the development period, and there was no wide approval of their
inclusion when they were discussed.

 * polypaudio

There wasn't an obvious consensus to add polypaudio (or even remove esd), so
we're stuck with the status quo for yet another release. Hopefully if the
planned HAL integration work is done for 2.12, we may have some chance of
convincing the policy-scared. ;-)

 * libgnomesu

Only one module in the Desktop release is adding support for it, and it is
not clear that libgnomesu solves the privilege escalation problem suitably
for GNOME, for cross-platform, policy and technical reasons.

 * gwget

Very little consensus that this is appropriate for inclusion in the Desktop
release.

 * gnome-doc-utils - include!

This has had a lot of positive buy-in from developers, and is used by yelp.
Definitely should go in.

 * pygtk

The consensus seemed to be that we clearly document that pygtk-based apps
are appropriate for the Desktop release rather than adding pygtk itself to
either Platform or Desktop. As yet, no pygtk-based apps have been proposed
for inclusion anyway.

 * totem - include!

Let's do it. The GStreamer support has been dramatically improved. If we can
watch or listen to vorbis/theora streams reliably, it's ready. :-)

 * galago, libnotify, notification-daemon

None of these have been used by other Desktop modules, nor have had regular
releases during the development period.

 * nautilus-sendto

Has not had regular releases during the development period, but after the
discussion about gnome-user-share, it looks like something we should very
seriously consider for a later GNOME release.

 * goobox

There was a rough consensus that we should include sound-juicer instead, as
it has been around for much longer, and is already shipped by many of our
distributors. Choosing something entirely different seems like unnecessary
software churn.

 * gnome-backgrounds - include!

Not hugely controversial or demanding module, very little discussion, but it
has at least had a release on ftp.gnome.org. Tentative yes, pending other
input.

 * gnome-menus - include!

Critical infrastructural component, regularly released, has had lots of
attention. Can't ship without it. :-)

 * gnome-user-share

There seemed to be a rough consensus that we should be looking at a send and
receive style interface to solve the use cases g-u-s was designed to help
with. That, in addition to the somewhat controversial Apache and "~/Public"
issues seems to indicate that there wasn't a strong consensus to include it.
:-)

 * gnome-keyring-manager

Very little discussion about it this time around, and it hasn't had regular
releases during the development period.

- Jeff

-- 
GUADEC 2005: Stuttgart, Germany                      http://2005.guadec.org/
 
   "The beanbag is a triumph of modern day eclectic colourism..." - Catie
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