Thoughts on the future of gnome

[alan <root variant me uk>]

Hi all!

This is my first post to the ml so please go easy on me :) (I hope its
the right place, I sent to the gnome-list but it seems to be unused i
think)

I was just thinking about gnome and making it more widespread and I
realised that the windows vista release is an ideal opertunity for
gnome (and other Free Software) to get noticed by the wider public.

Is it likly that a windows version of gnome (even a basic, light
version) will be available when vista is released? The way I see it is
this, people will look at the advertising and see all these cool
features that vista supposedly offers them but they will also notice
the price and the fact that their old 2GHz system just does'nt cut it
so they have to upgrade that too! What better time to have a huge
publicity drive which shows people "Look! we can give you all this, AND
all this other cool stuff, on your existing windows
computer without the need for expensive hardware upgrades! And guess
what? It's FREE!! (As in Freedom and as in beer)" 

All the publicity wont matter if gnome is'nt able to do "all this"
though so maby we could have a bit of a recruitment drive right now and
find people with the time to tackle some of the bigger tasks (porting,
new aplications etc). 

I know most of this is allready coverd in the
roadmap etc but I just want to tell people what I would like to see
happen! Im learning mono c# at the momment so maby I can even help in a
couple of months.

variant