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

[Luca Ferretti <lferrett gnome org>]

Il giorno gio, 12/05/2011 alle 19.01 -0400, David Zeuthen ha scritto:
> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 6:34 PM, Luca Ferretti <lferrett gnome org> wrote:
> >
> > Second: are we a censorship? are we fighting against the ugly? are all
> > non-gnome developers odd and stupid?
> >
> > It seems your starting point is: everybody's wrong, but not GNOME
> > people. I feel it really offensive and counterproductive for GNOME
> > project itself.
> 
> Speaking of offensive, suggesting that GNOME is a censorship is pretty
> offensive. Not to mention insulting. I'm not going to have a
> conversation with you like this. Please keep it real.

Someone said this was going emotional, so I'm re-reading it after a
restful sleep.

Unfortunately I fail to understand your indignation. I can't squeeze my
own concerns about the future of GNOME and it's governance; more, it
seems you have distorted my words and prevented any further
clarification and discussion.

But really this discussion seems to display a deep cleft about policy
and mission in GNOME. Those are political issues, not technical. We
can't solve them with a patch.

I believe that coopetition (yes, coopetition, a new word cooperation
+competition) and FLOSS principles should teach us the importance of
ideas and code's cross-fertilisation. I believe this system settings
policy is counterproductive for GNOME. I believe starting from "external
stuff is crap" is offensive. But I feel offensive because I strongly
believe we are not here to choose want people can do and what people
can't do, but simply provide a resource.

So IMHO choosing "a priori" what people can do and what people can't do
is... well, censorship, sorry. Matthias said "maintaining meaningful
boundaries between what is GNOME and what is not". Of course this is a
way to maintain a strong identity[1], but how does it implies? That we
have the Truth? And even if we had, we can't "annoying" restrain
distros, third parties to modify and customize: this is a part of
fundamental right of FLOSS.


Cheers, Luca


[1]  or apartheid... Are you going to cite Godwin's law? ;)