Re: Design by community

[Dave Neary <dneary free fr>]

Hi,

Evandro Fernandes Giovanini said:
> I think the process used by Novell is very common in the GNOME community
> (and Free Software in general).

Compare & contrast with Spatial nautilus and the GTK+ file selector.

It's also funny that you should pick Metacity - Havoc wrote a document 
on his theory of simple interface, then wrote metacity & released an 
early version. Design integrity, right. But RERO as well. Nautilus and 
the file selector were both designed by a small number of people, and 
implemented in the open by a wider community.

> I'm not sure I agree that "you can't do design by comittee" but I would
> agree that a lot of the good design decisions we see in GNOME today came
> from only a few coders doing their vision. I'd love to play with the
> code as soon as possible but maybe there are other reasons for it not
> being released yet. What GNOME can do is encourage the companies making
> changes in their development branches to at least commit the patches in
> a CVS branch. 

There's a question of principle at work here - does having an 
announcement effect (like a cool demo in Solutions Linux, or giving nice 
770 devices to GNOME developers) justify the secrecy of developing a 
free software product/feature to a point where it's usable offset the 
damage of developing in a cathedral, while participating in a bazaar?

You can have both design integrity and open development. We've proven it 
several times. You just need a pig-headed designer with a couple of 
dedicated disciples (both those qualifications are intended as compliments).

Cheers,
Dave.

--
David Neary
bolsh gimp org