Re: no external panels for gnome-control-center [was GNOME Feature Proposal: Backup]

[Sergey Udaltsov <sergey udaltsov gmail com>]

> Yes, GNOME should be an OS. Yes, GNOME should define the final user
> experience.
Oh really? Someone stated quite recently that we aim for "external
competition", right? If we define the final user experience, if we
build full OS - what's left to distros? What kind of external
competition can we talk about? How can Redhat compete with SUSE if
both of them use GNOME that defines _final_ user experience? Are
distros hanging around in order just to build rpms/debs and change
background images?

I think the idea that GNOME is the final-final product is
unrealistically selfish. The _final_ experience is defined by distros
(or even worse, by computer vendors, preinstalling and customizing
those distros). And by making visible boundaries in GUI ("this is
GNOME" - "this is not GNOME") we are making a bad favor to distros, in
terms of the user experience. Or enforce them to fork and to patch,
heavily. Which is not a good favor either.

I guess the questions like that will be discussed again and again. The
interaction between GNOME and distros is a very complex matter. On
political level, on user experience level, on technical level. Please
please please - put together the policy document. Even if its content
would make me and Luca unhappy - at least that would be some document
people could read, could refer to (may be, it would even make me shut
up:). At least I could send unhappy minority to read that document
when they WTF me (that happens a lot on linux.org.ru AKA "Russian
Slashdot"). Then they would decide if they want to stick with GNOME or
just move on - that might save d-d-l one day from the invasion of all
those unhappy heads.