Generating excitement in GNOME

["John (J5) Palmieri" <johnp redhat com>]

Recent blog posts I did:

http://www.j5live.com/?p=355
http://www.j5live.com/?p=356

gave some people the impression that I was against excitement in GNOME.
That sentiment could not be further from the truth.  In fact I see and
participate in exciting project every day.  However being a mature
project we need to weigh the new and exciting with the need to support
stability and time tested technology.  

The exciting stuff is happening all around us it is just that it is not
publicized and much of it takes a long term view that does not fit well
into our time based releases.  It is correct that they stay this way so
that they can move along, experimenting without the heavy constraints
that becoming part of release puts on them.

After talking with the release team to see if there are any objections,
as it is the release team that will be fielding the work that this
proposal will generate, we now open it up for comment to the rest of the
GNOME developer community.  We wish to start a new "Sneak Peek" release
module.  This module will contain API's and applications which are in
the process of being developed for a future release of GNOME but are not
yet API stable or in a form that is full acceptable for the GNOME
release process.  Examples may be a fully integrated Network Manager,
Telepathy, Gimme, Big Board, Beagle, and Tracker.

The current proposal for rules are that the project is in a usable
state, seeing active development, moving towards a time based release,
and having a dogfoodable upstream repository.  On top of that project
members should be open to advice from the GNOME community and recognize
that being part of the module does not grantee inclusion in GNOME at
some later date.  

This gives project the room to experiment while letting other developers
keep an eye on the future directions GNOME may go in.  It is my
prediction, seeing the way this sort of ecosystem bloomed with
freedesktop modules and GNOME, that there will be early adopters who
will port their apps to work with the newer technologies even before
API's are frozen and projects make it into the GNOME releases.  This
will allow the projects themselves to gain real world feedback and allow
GNOME to move faster by having applications already utilizing the
technologies before they are accepted.

This proposal is now open to comments and adjustments.

-- 
John (J5) Palmieri <johnp redhat com>