Re: What is GNOME?

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

George <jirka@5z.com> writes: 
> I think we should start looking at the concrete projects rather then continue
> the discussion in the abstract. 

That works for the initial list, but we need the abstract stuff for
the future, so I hope people will have comments on that too.
 
> audiofile
> bug-buddy
> control-center
> dia
> ee
> esound

ee and esound are unmaintained AFAIK, so not interesting for the
purpose of creating a list of members.

> gdk-pixbuf
> gdm
> gfloppy

gfloppy is an example of something I'd like to exclude; it took maybe
an hour to write. Of course, Jonathan will be a member for other
reasons, but I don't think someone should get membership just for
writing something like gfloppy.

> ggv
> glade
> glib
> gnome-admin
> gnome-applets
> gnome-audio
> gnome-core
> gnome-games
> gnomehack

gnomehack is non-free, which opens a whole can of worms. In general, I
don't think we want non-free projects to count. (Though in the nethack
case, my personal feeling is that it can slide due to nethack's long
tradition, there's no way we can make that kind of exception in
general.)

> GnomeHello
> gnome-chess
> gnome-libs
> gnome-linuxconf
> gnome-media
> gnome-network
> gnome-objc

gnome-objc is also unmaintained (though again, Elliot will be a member
for other reasons).

> gnome-pim
> gnome-print
> gnome-python
> gnome-utils
> gnorpm

I believe gnorpm is unmaintained.

> gnotepad+
> gnumeric
> g-print

What's g-print? That printer desktop icon? Didn't Miguel write that in
an hour or so?

> gtk-engines
> gtkmm
> Gtk--

gtkmm and Gtk-- are presumably the same thing. 

BTW, my personal feeling is that C++, Python, and maybe Perl bindings
are much more important than the "obscure" language bindings. But of
course, we'll get flameage for drawing that line. And flameage for
picking Gtk-- over SDP, etc. I promise not to flame about Inti, but
that doesn't get us far given the number of bindings. ;-)

> gtk+
> gtop
> imlib

What's the plan when imlib is "axed"? And also, imlib 1 is unmaintained.

> libghttp

Unmaintained.

> libglade
> libgtop
> libPropList

libPropList isn't used by anything AFAIK. At least not by anything
important...

> libxml
> libxml2

libxml2 wasn't in the release, or shouldn't have been.

> mc
> ORBit
> users-guide
> xchat
> 
> This is a very crude listing of things.  So let's refine it.  What are
> projects that are missing? What are projects that need to be added.  From the
> top of my head, the above is missing
> 
> sawmill
> nautilus
> evolution
> gedit
> 

With several of these, such as ggv, gedit, evolution, you open the "do
apps go in the list" can of worms. Or do only "apps that come with
Windows also" like Wordpad and Outlook clones go in the list?

Anyway, even this list looks pretty controversial. :-( I think we need
to actually answer the hard questions about what GNOME contains. If we
can't do that, then we need to answer it by saying that GNOME contains
everything imaginable. Then of course the worry is that the foundation
will be run by kids that write gfloppy and gless and stuff like that,
instead of by the larger contributors with lots of experience.

What lines can we draw? 

Havoc