Re: gnome-screensaver

[David Zeuthen <david fubar dk>]

On Thu, 2006-02-16 at 14:52 +0800, Davyd Madeley wrote:
> > Well, I'm not sure that many vendors nor users really care that much
> > about what we include in the desktop set - they usually omit some
> > software in the desktop and include lots of other useful bits. I think
> > the picture you're trying to paint of our vendors is sad.. surely they
> > know what to do, this is hardly rocket science [1].
> 
> Who is GNOME working for? Are we working for the vendors? 

See below.

> If so, I would
> really like a large cheque from each of the vendors to turn up in
> recompense for the time I spend on their software.
> 
> No, we're not all lucky enough to have jobs with the vendors. Some of us
> are working for the users and doing it in our own free time. Some of us
> care that the GNOME we ship and give out tarballs for is sane and cogent
> and makes sense by itself.

Most if not all end users that consume source rather than vendor
packages uses jhbuild, garnome or other tools. Do you disagree that they
don't or they shouldn't?

> Perhaps we should all just give up and go home now. Perhaps the release
> team should consist of someone from Redhat and someone from Novell and
> someone from Canonical and someone from Sun and whoever else wants to
> buy themselves a seat at the table.

Davyd, your first sentence was ("Who is GNOME working for?") was
sufficient... no need for being a drama queen :-)

> > So I don't really see your point, sorry, and what seriously worries me
> > is your rather silly suggestion about adding duplicate UI in
> > gnome-screensaver. Do you really want to add UI that is most likely to
> > go away in 2.16 if and when g-p-m should receive the questionable honor
> > of being included in the desktop set?
> 
> I actually thought this was quite a serious and sensible suggestion and
> that it should be a place where this setting is made available even
> after gnome-power-manager. The setting relates both to power management
> AND saving my screen from premature death.
> 
> I find your reference to questionable honour offensive. If this is what
> Redhat thinks of the work done and the quality of the modules we
> consider to be part of Desktop then why are they even bothering with
> such a shit piece of software. Perhaps they should ship CDE, it was
> popular for Sun and DEC.

I find your interpretation of my reference offensive and to make it
perfectly clear I don't think any of the software in the desktop set is
a "shit piece of software" [sic]. 

In fact I think GNOME and the software we call GNOME is great (otherwise
I wouldn't even bother being on this list), and what's even more
great... is the openness and willingness of the GNOME project, our
community, to help contributors like Richard (g-p-m) integrate with what
we call GNOME and deliver kick-ass software. Ditto for a bunch of other
software like Tomboy, Beagle and so forth. GNOME is doing well.

Hence, I don't really think there's a huge difference whether you're in
"that exclusive club" called the "desktop set" or not. While it may have
made tons of sense back in the day (GNOME 2.0) to have this exclusive
club... I don't really see the point now... it seems to me that it
mostly only leads to discussions on whether we bless something or not;
it leads to exchanging flames like these; hardly very productive..

I'd much rather that we a) cared about putting new useful stuff in the
platform and maintained ABI stability; and b) worked even more with
software authors that for all intents and purposes can be considered
something every GNOME user wants to install. For b) perhaps this
includes asking politely to observe freezes and following our time-based
release approach.

> > Discussing what's in or out of the desktop set isn't really interesting
> > to me; I think at best it's [2] some blessing, a pat on the back of the
> > authors and a more rigorous development schedule (observing freezes
> > etc.). But that is just what I think.
> 
> And not at all a mark of a level of preparedness, testing, suitability,
> stability and compliance with the ideals of the desktop.

The community around GNOME is already working pretty well; there's a ton
of useful and well-tested software outside what we call the desktop set
and more is added everyday. Do you disagree?

> > ship xscreensaver instead.
> 
> So is this the course of action you're recommending?

I'm saying I'm just questioning the usefulness of having a desktop set
where modules are giving an official blessing. Again, leave this to the
vendors and users; they're perfectly capable of making their own
decision; we don't need to be overly protective and/or control freaks
and make decisions on their behalf. 

I guess I'm also saying, and many have said this before me if you read
the archive, that perhaps GNOME should think of itself more as an
upstream project that downstream (vendors, Maemo, OLPC, etc.) consumes
and patches instead of a set of tarballs that Joe Random Hacker
downloads, compiles and uses.

IMO, that's where the future growth for GNOME is.

    David (an individual)