Re: Questions

[Ali Akcaagac <aliakc web de>]

> John Fleck wrote:
> In the GNOME 2.0 time frame, Ali for whatever reason made the
> decision to leave the user docs package out of CVSGnome. This
> meant that a substantial portion of the docs we had worked so
> hard to produce were unavailable to CVSGnome users. Ali
> disagreed, abusively, with my suggestion that this was a
> problem[1]. That wasn't a build system I could recommend, nor
> was it a project with which I was interested in having any
> further involvement.

Hello John,

For all respect to your work but sorry but this is weak argument.
CVSGnome when I started it was more or less a private toy. During
that time when I wrote it I was more or less selecting the Modules
on my own choice but still followed the release points. This doesn't
mean that CVSGnome wasn't building GNOME 2.0.0 at that time - It did
perfectly and only left out one Package the named documentation.

It wasn't my fault that someone made such a big harrassment out of
it on OSNews and I'm hardly to blame for this and after all the
time we should know the quality of OSNews - don't we ?

Anyways CVSGnome does include the gnome2-documentations shortly after
the GNOME 2.0.0 release it was added immediately at 14-07-2002 but
since then no one of the release team cared much enough. It was such
a little change but could have such a big effect on me and my work
and the feel to be part of something. As if mentioning it would hurt
someone.

I also know from good reliable sources that a few active members of
this community (preferabely the german community) has contacted the
release team more than one time where they asked about inclusion of
it but their reply was mostly left unanswered.

I heavily disagree here with the sentence 'Ali disagreed, abusively'
How can I abuse something ? I wasn't even aware that you belonged to
the release team that time. If you believe that there was a mistake
then you always had the chance to write an normal explaining email
to me to my private email address. What you did on the otherhand was
publicly trying to make CVSGnome look like a broken script. And you
named it that way.

Whenever I read public comments made by the GNOME authority like
'we need your help', 'become part of GNOME' it then starts to sound
like a big hoax in my ears. Looks like the few people to decide them
all don't just decide what tools belong to GNOME they also seem to
decide which person should belong there as well.

Look, after all we are just humans, we do mistakes, we do say
something bad by times and yes sometimes we also disagree but here in
the community we all trying to pull at the same cable (at least it
was so).

> That wasn't a build system I could recommend, nor was it a project
> with which I was interested in having any further involvement.

Don't you think you are acting to strong here. It wasn't a broken
system or something it only left out ONE package which was the
documentation. And here is the perfect example of what I wanted to
point out with abusive behavior when people are doing the job for too
long. They make up one opinion and keep it for years. Their personal
preference weights over the quality of the software and it's
impossible for others (not only my work) to participate in GNOME.
How can we get a change here when the roation is ignored. How can
people get a fair chance to promote their work as well. And I ask
myself here if this is right that one person decides them all.

If the rotation doesn't really work or the election of boardmembers
becomes worse with each year (e.g. the lesser people who vote) then
it's time for a change maybe. Look I am not valuing the people. I
do believe that you and the other releaseteam members are nice
persons in real life (well I will include Jeff as well here this
time) but I think when doing a job for too long that a little bit of
bias still remains in the head of people and I do see other projects
to not get the same chance. And you can imagine that I will stand up
and 'fight' for my chance. But my userbase the people using CVSGnome
still do not understand why it isn't mentioned.

CVSGnome is a modular system people who use it to build from Sources
are not Mom, Dad, Grandma or Grandpa they are technies people who do
more than just taking what's offered and what others have decided to
be right for them. CVSGnome offers a lot of possibilities to compile
from CVS AND Tarballs. You can even burn the script with all the
Tarballs on a CD and carry it to your friend and have it installed
there. The modules list can easily be expanded with more modules and
the people have the creativity to design their GNOME of choice with
the modules of choice. It is a hard balancing act for me to go with
good defaults what I want to offer the people is a fair ground where
they can set up a GNOME system without having the pain to e.g.
compile things they may not want. CVSGnome comes with over 80 modules
as default installation which gives people a solid and good GNOME
which they can easily expand. On the otherhand I also add a patch for
131 more modules that they can build or checkout as well. Hey, they
can even mix CVS and Tarballs here. Let's look at GARNOME for a
moment it definately adds to many modules in it's list Programs which
are not really 5th toe or which have the tendency to not fit right
into GNOME do you think it's easier for a person to build all these
modules in one go ? Sure you can say, hey if you do not like this
program then remove it from the buildprocess. But then the same way I
can tell you 'sorry for missing docs, you can easily add it'. But
was I given the chance ? NO.

I tell you, neither CVSGnome, GARNOME, JHBuild or V-B-S are perfect.
They all may fail on the one system but work on the other but all
they offer is a choice to build GNOME.

That's why I wanted to raise my proposal again that the upper
instances of GNOME (selfcontrol) is going to accomplish the
rotation. Germans, as well as Americans, Japan, China, India etc. are
all part of GNOME, the people contributing to it, the people making
religion around it. If there is a problem for people keep voting or
a problem for people found for rotation then there may be something
wrong in the way the things gonna be presented in the public.

greetings,

Ali Akcaagac