Re: Modulesets Reorganization

[Josselin Mouette <joss debian org>]

Le mercredi 02 juin 2010 à 00:37 +0100, Lucas Rocha a écrit :
> We're planning to do the actual reorganization of the modulesets as soon as
> possible during this development cycle. The idea is that GNOME 3 is released
> using the new modulesets.
> 
> The long term plan for the GNOME applications that were removed from the
> Desktop, Admin and Dev Tools modulesets is to simply highlight the high-quality
> applications using the GNOME platform through our communication channels
> (release notes, website, etc). There will be no "official" apps anymore and no
> 'Applications' moduleset in the GNOME releases. The goal here is be more open
> with the app developer community around GNOME and to highlight all the nice
> things that can be created using our platform.

I am very skeptical about this. The disappearance of the current desktop
moduleset means that GNOME will stop providing a full-fledged desktop,
which is what us distributors are all looking for.

One of the strengths of GNOME is that you get synchronized releases for
everything that makes a desktop. Not just a bunch of applications that
happen to work together: a desktop. It has grown to provide integration
of each application into others to constitute a unique, homogenous
desktop experience.

The disappearance of the desktop moduleset will crush all these efforts
in an instant. Suddenly you will leave just a random number of
applications that are out of sync, and this will make it very hard to
integrate all of them together in a single desktop. 

Let me show you some figures:
http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=meta-gnome2

Currently 35% of registered Debian systems have gnome-core (which is
very close to the new module arrangement you are proposing). 30% have
gnome-desktop-environment, which is the current official moduleset, and
20% have gnome, which is the same with some extras.

So roughly (only a low number of systems are registered on popcon) 15%
of our GNOME users are interested in something as light as the new
desktop moduleset you are proposing. And we are one of the distributions
with the largest number of users interested into lightweight, customized
desktops.

I understand you want downstream distributors to make their own mind
about what they want to distribute in their desktops. But frankly this
will only reduce the amount of support and integration we are able to
provide. Different distributions will be less synchronized, and without
synchronization between their releases, the integration between
applications is bound to lower in quality.

In short, I understand you want to split the core desktop and the
recommended applications. But there has to be a set of recommended
applications in the official modulesets. 

Cheers,
-- 
 .''`.      Josselin Mouette
: :' :
`. `'   “A handshake with whitnesses is the same
  `-     as a signed contact.”  -- Jörg Schilling