Re: Modulesets Reorganization

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen <mikkel kamstrup gmail com>]

On 3 June 2010 11:26, Milan Bouchet-Valat <nalimilan club fr> wrote:
> Le mercredi 02 juin 2010 à 22:08 +0200, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen a
> écrit :
> <snip>
>> My proposal is to let us inspire by the Apache Incubator idea[1],
>> making app inclusion a two stage process. Mature in the Gnome
>> Incubator and then when the project is mature and well maintained it
>> gets the honour of graduating into the Gnome Application Portfolio.
>>
>> It's important to note that we should be able to have several
>> competing apps in both incubator and in the portfolio. It might not be
>> a good idea to have 10 music players, but 3 or 4 should not be a
>> problem. Distributors and contributors alike can make their own
>> choices and pick their favourite(s). So I call it "portfolio" because
>> it's not a "module" where we expect distributors to ship everything,
>> but a collection of blessed top notch stuff.
> But isn't GNOME's failure to decide on a blessed music player the reason
> why we now have the choice between (at least) two good ones which are
> mostly equivalent, instead of one excellent? The same applies to
> Rhythmbox vs. Banshee and GThumb vs. F-Spot vs. Shotwell vs. Solang: I
> suspect we may be wasting energy in largely duplicated efforts.
>
> OTOH nobody has tried duplicating Evolution, Eye of GNOME or Evince - or
> if they have, that's gone unnoticed, which amounts to the same. Once an
> application is an official module, people know they better improve it
> and join their efforts rather than starting their random project
> elsewhere; eventually we get better software.

I think the unexpressed core of my idea is based on the assumption
that this existing model is basically flawed. No matter how hard you
try to force developers towards the one true app they will always
diverge and tread new ground. No matter how cool apps are some
distributors and users alike will fancy alternatives. I think we
should embrace this fact (and I really think that it's an empirical
indisputable fact) and make the most of it. That was my idea.

I think among your examples Evince is the only one you are right
about. Evolution and EOG has an abundance (high quality) of
alternatives.

-- 
Cheers,
Mikkel