Re: Remove GnomeMeeting from Gnome module list?

[danilo gnome org (Danilo Šegan)]

Today at 8:45, Murray Cumming wrote:

> Even if he is not benefiting fully, or even if he is not aware of how he
> could, he is getting the benefit anyway. Obviously translators would
> like the chance to make new major .0 versions of gnomemeeting as good as
> possible, but they are able to do that for the version that comes with
> new major .0 versions of GNOME, and they actually have extra time to do
> that. So far I have not heard of any problems that actually affect the
> quality of a GNOME release.

Ok.  I still don't know _how_ does it benefit (so I still don't see a
reason for it being in the cycle)?  That's what I wondered about.  I
mean, could have this been any other module out there which had frozen
releases when appropriate, that we could add it to Gnome?

> So I really don't think it's a big problem that gnomemeeting declared
> itself stable before the rest of GNOME. GTK+ and libxml do that too, by
> the way. We hope that they get more in sync, but it's not killing us too
> much if the don't. 

Ok, that's what I asked others' opinion on.  Thank you for sharing yours.

As for GTK+, Owen has previously stated that GTK+ is *NOT* following
Gnome release cycle, and that he can just do us a favor from time
to time (like working extra hard on 2.4 to get it out in time for
Gnome release, or releasing tarballs for .0 Gnome releases).  It
doesn't even use Gnome rules for branching ("gnome-2-6" vs "gtk-2-4"), 
which should say enough about it being part of Gnome.

libxml2 is different in that it has reached certain level of maturity,
and we're just having bug-fix releases for some 15 months now. 

So, this is entirely different thing: these are platform libraries, and
one could say that they're already pretty much independent (after all,
how many of our desktop components are actually usable on Windows? and
of libraries we're talking here as exceptions?  I'm *not* implying this
is a bad thing, just that they're different from the rest of Gnome in
many ways).  No matter how hard we try, we cannot do without them.

> _Maybe_ Damien has not fully understood the benefits of being on the
> Desktop module list, but there are clearly no benefits for him taking it
> off the list.

My opinion was that nothing would change, and that's why I asked for
it.  Except for being able to say "Gnome includes GnomeMeeting,
excellent VoIP and voice chat [ok, bear with me, I know it's not just
'voice chat'] software" and "GnomeMeeting is included in Gnome", I
don't see what else we'd lose (and marketing is where I see Gnome
benefiting more than GnomeMeeting itself at this time, so perhaps it's
enough on its own?).

*Where was I wrong?* (apart from my approach to things, which was
pointed out by several people already)

I really wonder how does being in Gnome currently benefit GnomeMeeting?  
It's supposed to get more care from translators, documentors, QA,
etc. but they all come at wrong time, since releases are out of sync.
Please, I'm not ignoring the facts, I'd just like them spelled out
for me.  It's easy to spell them out for any module that tracks the
schedule.

Unfortunately, nobody has yet stated why is it good for GnomeMeeting
to be in the module list, and why is it good for Gnome?  If there are
some benefits that I missed out, I'd be more than glad to eat my own
words, and ask for GnomeMeeting to stay in the module list.  

> However, I think this is far more about Damien just not having time at
> one or two times. And that's completely OK.

Certainly.  Never tried to imply that this was not all right.  That
has happened in the past with other modules as well, and we try to
cope with that.

> I'm more concerned that gnomemeeting is so difficult to build. I think
> Damien would have much more contact with the various sub-teams if they
> could build it.

That's another issue, which might be true (I originally had a lot of
problems building it, but we were all aware of that, and decided to go
with it because we considered GnomeMeeting an important addition to
Gnome desktop; I still do, but including it just to say that we
include it is not what I think should be the main reason).  I don't
think anybody expected to have unsynced releases.

Cheers,
Danilo