Re: GNOME 2.23 Schedule

[Olav Vitters <olav bkor dhs org>]

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 09:52:12PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 8:55 PM, Olav Vitters <olav bkor dhs org> wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 08:16:21PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> >  > >  And yes, there are Ubuntu brainstorm too, and two most popular
> >  > >  requests last time I checked was make suspend work magically without
> >  > >  glitch everywhere and make GNOME capable to manage any network
> >  > >  connection type.
> >  [..]
> >
> > > That's a great example, actually there are other interesting wanted features:
> >  >
> >  > 6. Speed Up Ubuntu-Gnome boot time <- don't we all want that?
> >
> >  Which right makes the suggestion totally useless. It could be that the
> >  current boot time is too slow. But could also be caused by the survey.
> >  At least initially the most requested 'features' were shown at the top.
> >  Everyone wants things to go faster, so a high percentage wanting this
> >  doesn't say anything.
> 
> No survey, this is an "ideastorm", users put whatever they want. This
> idea was suggested by Arioch on 28 Feb 08, there are old crappy ideas
> and new popular ones.
> http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/contributor/Arioch/
> 
> What it tells you is that some people would appreciate to put
> "Investigate startup time improvements" on:
> http://live.gnome.org/RoadMap

With what intention? The RoadMap is a list of things the developers will
work on.. as collected from what the developers said.
There is no 'put on roadmap and developers will work on it'; it is the
other way around. If developers would work on it, it hopefully gets on
the roadmap. This so distributions know what they can expect from the
next GNOME version.

> >  > 7. Improve dual-screen function <- xrandr is cool but not user-friendly enough
> >
> >  Developers would need concrete bugs ('improve' is vague). At least you
> >  could have all GNOME developers be sponsored big enough pcs + two
> >  monitors.
> >
> >  So the suggestion needs to be checked (are there problems), then changed
> >  into concrete action points. But ehr.. that should be the intention of
> >  that Ubuntu brainstorm.. I assume this will be done by Ubuntu at one
> >  point.
> 
> Like this? http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/206/

Yes. Ubuntu is acting as a translator between user and developer. Which
is what I am suggesting you could do as well.

> >  > 8. Unmount resolution <- lsof and kill help, but so would a GUI
> >
> >  Or just avoid the whole issue all together. What I mean is: you need a
> >  translation between some suggestion, the real cause and concrete steps.
> 
> How can you avoid the issue? Sometimes you unmount things some process
> is using and you are not aware of that.

Ehr.. 'unmount resolution': I assumed you couldn't unmount because of
some process and you want to kill it (e.g. bash process cd'ed in that
dir). You could even think of something that wouldn't need the process
to be killed, but would instead save the state locally ('gedit was using
that USB, don't worry.. it'll be written next time you plug it in').

> Anyway, the fact that it's an important issue remains.

I don't see that as a fact (in the meaning: 'stop everything, work on
this now asap'). I agree that there are a lot of things that should be
fixed/improved.

> >  > 10. Easy mounting of Images like ISO and CUE
> >
> >  That is so generic that it could be GNOME, distro feature, something
> >  else.
> >
> >
> >  > I find #10 particularily interesting; are developers really aware that
> >
> >  'developers': meaning who? GNOME developers?
> >
> >
> >  > so many users want that? is bugzilla enough to see such kind of
> >  > things? is it really true that there are no resources to implement
> >  > that?
> >
> >  You assume there is a bag of developers that can be assigned to work on
> >  something. I'd love more developers as well.. but event then.. they
> >  should already be working on something... people doing nothing is
> >  inefficient.
> 
> developers != current developers

So convince new developers.

> New developers would possibly look for positive feedback and praise,
> usually that comes from the users. Implementing a feature that you,
> and thousands of users want sounds appealing for a lot of people.

Perhaps -- I am not sure about what drives people. For me it isn't about
implementing features.. nor feedback/praise from users.

> Perhaps the roadmap is not a good place for that, perhaps some feature
> list, perhaps even the bug reports could help, but you need to *see*
> the votes.

Votes don't work. Really, the most popular bug on Mozilla Bugzilla has
around 750 votes. There are millions of (Firefox) users out there. The
750 is not significant (nor a representation of the Fx target group).

It only results (on Mozilla Bugzilla) about 'XXX votes, why isn't it
fixed?!?', etc. Plus discussions on how many votes each person should
have.

Other ideas -- go ahead.

> Take for example the maemo bugzilla, you can easily see the most wanted things:
> http://tinyurl.com/2eajzg
> 
> There are potential new developers out there but I doubt they would
> want to work on a feature nobody else cares about.

So that is why I gave that Jokosher example.. shine by doing.

> >  > There's a bug report for that dating 2003:
> >  > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=103817
> >  >
> >  > Forget about patches, there's a nautilus extension packaged and everything!
> >
> >  Meaning: developers did their job, up to the distro to ensure it is
> >  installed by default?
> >
> >
> >  > I guess those thousands of users can wait, GNOME developers know better.
> >
> >  Please stop with making such statements. It is not productive and
> >  misrepresent what is being done. If you're going to whine that you do
> >  not have a personal developer, do that somewhere else.
> 
> I _am_ a developer and I develop stuff that ultimately helps the GNOME
> desktop (Pidgin msn stuff), and I know from experience users that are
> mis-represented in the community of their favorite application.

Which application? Pidgin? I don't see that as GNOME, but as a Gtk using
application. For GNOME, see http://www.gnome.org/start/unstable for the
list of GNOME applications. Then there is also the GNOME infrastructure
using stuff (on ftp.gnome.org). If an app isn't even on GNOME infra..
then d-d-l is likely not the mailing list you want.

I'll refrain from commenting about Pidgin specifically.

> You say you need developers, but you certainly haven't made me feel
> like I could be useful around here with that hostility.

I said various times that I'd really appreciate if you'd do usability
studies. I am direct in my communication -- cultural thing. However,
don't see that as hostility.

> I will develop somewhere else.

?!? and now suddenly this is about developing? I don't get the
intention. Whatever you want to improve, go ahead and do it. If during
that you need help / have questions: shout!

-- 
Regards,
Olav