Re: Generating excitement in GNOME

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

On Wed, 2007-04-25 at 14:08 -0400, Tristan Van Berkom wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-04-25 at 13:50 -0400, John (J5) Palmieri wrote:
> [...]
> > 
> > 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.
> 
> Cool idea, I think its a nice idea to promote some of the more
> experimantal projects but also we should be careful of appearences,
> the way you put it, it sounds as though the release team is putting
> "heavy constraints" on module maintainers - I think this is just
> not the case at all and is a stumbling block for many projects to 
> participate in gnome releases.
> 
> the platform suite is obviously an exception since we want at least
> a certain level of api stability there (or at least formality wrt
> api/abi breaks), but as far as desktop projects, applications for
> administration or other misc things go; time based releases are only 
> a good thing to help us all coordinate in the project (i.e. a release
> date doesnt have to be percieved as a looming scary moment that we have
> to be in a hurry to meet a deadline, nobody afaics is demanded to make
> any kind of promises or whatever - the release team will even publish
> your tarball for you if you dont have the time).

You are correct.  However our constraints are more geared to
stabilization than experimentation.  I would like the new module to be
the flip side.  The biggest issue is the time based constraints which
are great for what we have but not so good for creating what we don't
already have. However we do need some constraints in order for the
projects to stay focused to the goal of eventually moving up the ladder
to time based releases.

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