Re: IRC channels in gnome development

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi,

Gendre Sebastien wrote:
> Le samedi 05 février 2011 à 11:43 -0600, Paul Cutler a écrit :
>> Development is not a democracy
> 
> For a personal project, no. But Gnome is not your personal project, it's
> a community project. The light of this, you have a duty of openness to
> the whole community.

"A community project means exactly what Paul says - it is not a
democracy. Your argument is one of the main fallacies circulated about
free software - just because the project is free software does not mean
that everyone's opinion carries equal weight.

You have an array of forums for expressing your opinion, as do I, but in
the end of the day, the most important opinion is the one which is
expressed in code.

> So far I have mostly attended one-way debat with designers. Some people
> arrive with good arguments but they are ignored or they receive
> ridiculous and/or void cons-arguments. Impossible to have a good debat.

I think it is important for designers to have a good productive
relationship with some key developers. I think it's important for the
designers to be competent, and to have the trust of the developers. And
honestly, the opinion of people outside that group carry much less weight.

Sure, designers & developers need to avoid presenting plans & products
carved in marble, but what you call "good arguments" might not be good
arguments to members of the core team of Shell. In the end of the day,
changing something which is a core concept of a project probably needs a
*lot* of evidence that the change would be a positive one.

And for things which are accessory, there would at least need to be a
decent level of agreement on a proposed alternative. Changing design
should be just as hard and have just as high a bar as proposing a patch
for a feature.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org