Re: Features vs. Time-based [Was: Gnome 2 infinity and beyond]

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

> [1] Holy shit, just stop talking about version numbers at all. It
> totally doesn't mean anything useful.

I understand you and most developers do not think it is important but
would it kill you to recognise that some people do* and it wouldn't hurt
to try and pin down when it might happen to something less vague than
"maybe later"?

> Chris got it right. To fix the lack of agenda, we need to set an agenda that
> is independent of the release cycle - particularly for bigger goals that we
> think about for Topaz. That doesn't mean dumping the time-based releases.

Agreed.  How can I help make there be an agenda?

> There is *NO PRESSURE* to call something 'GNOME 3.0'. We can do it when
> we're ready.

No one is saying when if ever we might be ready.  You are not even saying
we wont be ready for at least another 2 or 3 releases and to stop asking
until then.  No one here seems to think it is strange to have the 2.x
branch continue for updwards of 8 years but I cannot be the only one
looking in thinking it is a bit weird**.

> We can deprecate the crap out of our platform *RIGHT NOW* and
> be happy that it's still API/ABI compatible.

> We can write amazingly cool new stuff *RIGHT NOW* and drop it into the
> 2.x release series when it's ready.

> When we decide that GNOME is qualitatively worthy [2] of the 3.0 moniker, we

What is worthy is entirely subjective and another non-answer which doesn't
make things any clearer until you set some way to quantify what you think
would be worthy.  (I don't know if this is really just another way of
asking some one to write a draft spec?)

Hell at the very worst please just say nobody has any idea when if ever
3.0 will happen, and what might be needed before anyone can provide a
credible answer?

Can you really blame me for asking about 3.0?  Somebody had to ask
eventually.

-- 
Alan



> can purge the deprecated crap, make big changes to the OOTB experience, and
> make a fuckload of noise.

[OOTB does that stand for: out of the box???  hate acronyms, I'm not
stupid but had to look it up before i could even guess what you were
talking about.]

* At the very least it has some marketing value to change the version
number based on how much has improved since 2.0 alone.

** It may be an extremely small group but I'm not the only one
http://www.pthree.org/2006/04/16/where-art-thou-gnome-30/