Re: Creation of a new roadmap for GNOME

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Vincent:

> There have been some discussions in the past few weeks on how to improve
> the GNOME roadmap. The result of those discussions is a new process to
> create and maintain a GNOME-wide roadmap.

If we are going to keep closer track of a GNOME RoadMap, then wouldn't
it also make sense to keep track of ongoing RoadMap issues such as
Project Ridley?

  http://live.gnome.org/ProjectRidley?highlight=%28projectridley%29

Project Ridley is basically an effort to improve overall interface
stability, by moving important interfaces from the Desktop into the
Platform and cleaning up the Platform so that fewer libraries are
needed to write a reasonable GNOME application.  Also what about
other related ideas that I've seen talked about, like replacing
libart_lgpl with cairo?  I know the GNOME team has done a lot of work
implementing Project Ridley, but are the current plans still accurately
represented on the Project Ridley website?

I'd think there are other interface stability issues that should also
be tracked in our RoadMap.  For example, how are end users supposed
to integrate with various FreeDesktop specifications.  Should people
be encouraged to use Portland interfaces or gtk-update-icon-cache,
update-desktop-database, and update-mime-database?

  http://portland.freedesktop.org/wiki/

Are there any plans to expand the GNOME Platform to include any
libraries that are needed to write a reasonable GNOME application?
Or will the Platform shrink to remove no-longer-needed libraries
such as libgnome?  I don't think there has been any real discussion
about what we're doing in this area for a while, so it might be
worth some discussion.

It would be nice to perhaps identify what interfaces the GNOME desktop
should provide to end-users which are not currently provided.  For
example, there is no stable/recommended interface for adding applets to
the panel, or shortcuts to the desktop.  Are there features like this
that should be considered in a RoadMap?

Since improving interface stability is an ongoing effort, it seems
a RoadMap is a good place to keep track of how far along we are, and
where we hope to go.  Though, perhaps this is out of scope of what
you are planning to do with this.

> More details about how this process will work are available at:
>   http://live.gnome.org/RoadMap/Process
>
> In the next few days, all maintainers will receive a mail asking them
> some questions about their plans for the modules they're maintaining.
> It's really important that maintainers take the time to correctly reply
> to this mail. A new team (the Roadmap Gang) will analyse all the
> replies, and try to keep only the relevant parts for a GNOME-wide
> roadmap.
>
> Not only will we get a roadmap, but this will also help highlight some
> of our goals, which should make it easier to know where to put some of
> our efforts and what is the direction of our development.
>
> This will also give us roadmaps for each of our modules: this will
> hopefully help new contributors know where they can help.

Would it make sense to make use of bugzilla to tag (perhaps with a
keyword) those issues that correspond to the RoadMap, so people could
easily find where help is most needed by just using a bugzilla search
or look at a report showing them sorted with priorities?

> If you're interested in helping with this process, please contact Lucas
> and me: we need a few more people in the Roadmap Gang. There's no need
> to be a huge contributor, so don't hesitate to step up: only some free
> time is required :-)

I'd be interested in being involved.

> We hope this will contribute to make GNOME rock even more!

I think this is a great idea.

Brian