Re: Planning for GNOME 3.0

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi all,


Vincent Untz wrote:
> During the first few months of 2008, a few Release Team members
> discussed here and there about the state of GNOME. This was nothing
> official, and it could actually have been considered as some friends
> talking together about things they deeply care about. There were
> thoughts that GNOME could stay with the 2.x branch for a very long time
> given our solid development methods, but that it was not the future that
> our community wants to see happening. Because of lack of excitement.
> Because of lack of vision. Slowly, a plan started to emerge. It evolved,
> changed, was trimmed a bit, made more solid. We started discussing with
> a few more people, got more feedback. And then, at GUADEC, the Release
> Team proposed an initial plan to the community that would lead the
> project to GNOME 3.0. Quite some time passed; actually, too much time
> passed because too many people were busy with other things. But it's
> never too late to do the right thing, so let's really be serious about
> GNOME 3.0 now!

<snip>

Let me say up front that I'm happy that the release team has started to
focus on 3.0, and as Vincent says, this plan is mostly a solidification
of trends which can be observed in the community right now, so I mostly
have no problem with the proposals coming from the release team.

However...

I have a problem with the direction of the project being decided by
*just* the release team, with no public consultation period. I would
have expected a call for proposals, much as we do for new modules,
followed with vibrant debate, followed by a release team decision.

I understand that the calendar caught up with the release team on this,
but having a transparent decision process is important for strategic
decisions of this importance to the future of the project.

Once again, I'm not unhappy with the decisions that have been made, but
the means is also important, and I think it behoves the release team to
have a consultation period instead of announcing release plans as a fait
accompli.

I'm not sure what can be done about it now, but at least, it might be
useful if release team discussions on this subject were published for
review, I think.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org