Re: communication/information between forward-looking projects [was Re: Some info (Ref: GSOC 2008 advice)]

["Luis Villa" <luis tieguy org>]

On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 9:35 AM, natan yellin <aantny gmail com> wrote:
> First of all, I'd just like to point out that I've only been using Linux for
> about eight months. If anything I say is incorrect, corrections are more
> than welcome.
>
>
>  On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 12:34 AM, Luis Villa <luis tieguy org> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 3:03 PM, Ketil Wendelbo Aanensen
> > <ketil w aanensen gmail com> wrote:
> > > Hi, I'm new on this list.
> > >
> > >  Luis Vila encouraged me to send some info to this list, so here goes:
> > >
> > >  Disclaimer: I'm not a developer, just an avid user of Gnome and
> > >  various eye candy. I especially follow Screenlets and AWN closely.
> >
> > I firmly believe that people who communicate information between
> > developers can be just as useful as  the developers themselves, so I'm
> > really glad Ketil posted this here. I for one certainly didn't know
> > some of this stuff (though admittedly I don't follow development
> > nearly as closely as I used to.)
> >
> > Natan's post here ( http://theesylum.com/2008/02/01/desktop-20/ ) was
> > sort of eye-opening to me; I don't agree with everything he said but I
> > thought this was uncool:
> >
> I'm curious to know what you disagree with. I'm open to new ideas about how
> universal applets should work.

It wasn't actually about the universal applets stuff, which I don't
really feel qualified to comment on. It was the comments about GNOME
3.0:

"The GNOME community is strongly against anything that can be thought
of as "GNOME 3.0.""

I don't think that's correct, for a number of reasons. First, it
assumes that the broad GNOME community has one opinion on GNOME 3.0,
which is anything but the case- there is a lot of disagreement on the
issue. Second, if there is any one thing which is agreed on, I think
it would be less 'no GNOME 3.0' and more 'no 3.0 for the sake of 3.0'.
In other words, if someone can come up with something that truly
improves the *user* experience (*not* the developer experience) then
that should at least be considered as the core of a new GNOME.

But many reasonable minds might disagree on that :)

Probably the important thing is less what I think and more that if you
really can improve the user experience, then you're more than welcome
to and people will (and should) get excited about that. So don't let
what you've seen or read about GNOME 3.0 discourage you from getting
involved.

> > "[T]here are multiple GNOME Desktop 2.0 apps that are being developed
> > independent of GNOME. There needs to be a common vision, goal, and
> > plan.... ***The communication between the different projects is
> > virtually nonexistent.***" (emphasis mine)
> >
> > Like I said, I really don't follow development all that much any more;
> > if it isn't on planet or d-d-l I don't really know about it. So it's
> > possible that this claim isn't accurate. But if this last sentence
> > ('communication ... is virtually nonexistent') is true, that's a big
> > problem for GNOME, no? (I did think it was somehow telling that
> > Natan's blog refers to this as being posted to gnome-love rather than
> > desktop-devel, which is nominally the center of desktop discussion for
> > us.)
> >
> I wasn't aware that d-d-l existed until today. As I said, I'm new.

Then clearly we're failing to get people on the same page. Problem for us. :)

> > Natan, I'm curious if you have any ideas on how to encourage
> > communication between the various projects which are looking at
> > radical change (besides the obvious one of Writing Code, which you're
> > obviously trying to do.)
> >
> Let's start with a planet blog for all Desktop 2.0 related projects. We may
> want to even consider including KDE (and maybe even OS X and Windows)
> developers.
>
> I can set it up myself, if no one else feels like doing it.

I'd personally prefer to just get everyone involved onto an existing
planet, instead of fragmenting things more. If the problem is that
people are not feeling involved in GNOME then get them onto planet
gnome, not create another planet :) But I'm not doing the work so I
don't get much say :)

Luis