Re: International Space Station Images

[Maxim Udushlivy <maxim udushlivy gmail com>]

Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
> There is no conspiracy.  Really.
>
> [...]
> You may feel indignant at the current wording of the FAQ, but it was not
> written that way to annoy you.  You are just sensitive to wording.  It's
> like when Arnold Schoenberg got sensitive that some poor musical chords
> were less likely to be used than others, and so he destroyed harmony
> altogether.
>
>   
> > 1. State openly that gtkmm website contains subtle (unintentional?) 
> > lies. (This was the most important for me personally.)
> >     
>
> Definitely unintentional.  No more of a lie than saying "the sky is
> blue" in Mexico City.  Everyone knows intuitively that the sky is
> supposed to be blue, even though it looks kind of brownish when you look
> out the window.
>   
I said that this is important to me personally, but I am not caring 
about myself. I am not sensitive to wording, what I am sensitive to are 
subtle lies that cause a domino effect of spreading misconceptions 
(sample: http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/928).

"The sky is blue" is a poetry, but "gtkmm is a toolkit" is something 
different. This is an unfair advertisement. Or may be Murray is a poet? 
Anyway, this case is closed.

> > 2. Propose a position of a Moderator. This could automatically increase 
> > signal/noise ratio of mailing lists; debates won't be endless; people 
> > would afraid to lie; less politics and more activity; Gnome will be more 
> > comfortable for people from Eastern Europe and Asia (some if not all 
> > eastern cultures are not compatible with meritocracy!)
> >     
>
> [...]
> Making GNOME's customs more palatable to non-Western cultures is a
> *very* interesting problem, and one that we should definitely solve.
> Someone should start polling Eastern free software hackers into why they
> may feel that GNOME doesn't feel welcoming to them.  Would you like to
> start such an investigation?
>
> [There *is* prior work in trying to answer that question... Alan Cox and
> others will be able to inform you.]
>
>   
I was thinking recently about similar subject: why there are more 
programmers from Eastern Europe in FreeBSD community then in Linux and 
Gnome. Here are some considerations that may be useful.

Every community (project) has its subculture, which means that there is 
an entrance barrier for every newcomer. Overcoming that barrier requires 
from the newcomer to change his mentality to some extent. The question 
is whether Gnome's barrier requires too much from non-Western people.

I see two aspects here: goals and means. A truly international project 
must have national-independent goals and means. Perhaps the best example 
is the International Space Station. Its goals are science and technology 
while means are mutual trust and partnership. In order to participate in 
ISS nobody needs to change, no barrier at all, because science and trust 
are international.

If you want Gnome to become more appealing to Eastern Europe, compare 
Gnome with FreeBSD which does not participate in "free vs commercial" 
wars, has a sensible community structure, pursues clear goals, has 
Computer Science (not income) as a muse and is not driven by corporate 
interests. In short, FreeBSD is university, opened and transparent to 
everybody. All BSD projects, like universities, very often share 
technology - this cannot be said about desktops.

> > 5. Formulate the Gideon Principle and propose it as a cornerstone for 
> > Gnome HIG and certification.
> >     
>
> What is the Gideon Principle?
>   
The third section: start with "So here is that principle", skip a reply 
from Calum Benson and below is an explanation of that principle in a 
form of a metaphor:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2006-August/msg00275.html

> > 6. Discuss the possibility of contribution of Gideon to Gnome since 
> > Gnome hosts GTK+. (I admit that I sounded frivolous on the 
> > "Contribution" thread, but that's because I was not sure that such 
> > contribution could happen and is fully sensible.)
> >     
>
> I'm sure that Gideon has a ton of interesting ideas and code that should
> be reused.
>
> Right now we have way too many GUI designers:  Glade-2, Glade-3,
> Gazpacho, Stetic, Gideon, and probably others.  Someone needs to take
> the initiative to stop reinventing this particular wheel, and see what
> is common across all of those GUI designers.  Is it that they allow
> integration with IDEs?  Is it the XML descriptions?  Is it the
> mechanisms for plugging in new widget types?  Etc.
>
> The task of "integrating libglade into GTK+" got postponed from GTK+
> 2.10, because no one finished the work.  That's the library side of
> things, but we also need the actual GUI designer and the integration
> with the IDEs.  That's the initiative that someone needs to take to
> avoid so much reinvention.
>   
Contribution of Gideon is revoked.

> > 7. Propose to narrow Gnome by ideology (this is a short formulation of 
> > an implementation style - not a HIG, but something like a motto: "Simple 
> > interface, great functionality, coherent behavior") (In fact that's my 
> > motto that I use when I develop GUI applications. It is a 
> > user-understandable reformulation of the Gideon Principle)
> >     
>
> That's a nice motto, and it applies very well to some of GNOME's goals.
> It would be nice to distill that into some document.  *Everyone* should
> read "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" and related books, but it
> would be nice to have all that philosophy distilled into a nice and
> short document for GNOME.  Want to write one?
>   
In fact there are a number of ideas around the Gideon Principle. Time 
will tell whether they deserve to be written down.