Re: Modulesets Reorganization

[Paul Cutler <pcutler gnome org>]

Hi,

On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 10:29 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote:
> Le mercredi 02 juin 2010, à 10:15 +0200, Patryk Zawadzki a écrit :
> > On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 10:08 AM, Patryk Zawadzki <patrys pld-linux org> wrote:
> > >> 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.
> > >
> > > And this might do the exact opposite of what we all want it to do.
> > > Instead of sending a "you are now all equal" message it might
> > > communicate that "you are now equally not worthy". Or just "you are
> > > now on the same level" even if the level of integration and sheer
> > > polish is nowhere to be compared.
> > >
> > > It will also kill the "magic moment" I experienced twice - once when I
> > > helped Daniel with Cheese and a second time when hacking on Hasmter
> > > with Toms. The moment that comes after weeks of mad hacking when you
> > > decide your work is finally good enough to become part of GNOME.
> 
> What if suddenly cheese gets promoted on the www.gnome.org frontpage? Or
> it's one highlight of the release notes for GNOME X.Y? Wouldn't this be
> a similar magic moment? And yes, we should do this for the great
> applications.

I think this is a key point.  We talked a bit about this at the
Marketing hackfest and the ability to market key applications -
especially those that we think may be awesome apps that weren't part of
the "Desktop" before - is important.  End users are getting used to the
idea of apps (and app stores) and while GNOME has not included a media
manager in the Desktop we should be marketing Rhythmbox and Banshee or
the next great one that's developed.  (And gives us interesting ways to
partner with downstream distributions as well).

To market these apps effectively, they will need to adhere to GNOME
guidelines and processes.  They'll need to be free software, they'll
need to be localized, they'll need documentation, they'll need to be
accessible.  Then, and only then, should we be marketing to them on
places like GNOME.org.

> 
> > Forgot to mention: not having a single release schedule will also make
> > it very hard for app authors to propose, track and depend on features
> > of the underlying platform or - even worse - features introduced in
> > other apps.
> 
> Huh. There's really a misunderstanding here. We *do* encourage people to
> follow our best practices, which includes following our release
> schedule. Take banshee: they use our release schedule. The six-months
> schedule won't disappear.
> Vincent
> 


Speaking of Banshee - this was a pretty active conversation a few months
ago within the Banshee community whether Banshee should follow the GNOME
release cycle or not.  I had volunteered (long ago) to write the
documentation for Banshee, and once this decision was made to align with
the GNOME release cycle, it was a very big motivational tool to get the
documentation finished.  

Paul