Re: Questions for candidates

[Glynn Foster <Glynn Foster Sun COM>]

Hey,

> I think that the time has come to look at the identity of the GNOME Desktop, and the GNOME community. For example, I went to a presentation at GU4DEC in Dublin, where the following points were made [to summarize]: 

Any chance you could tell us what this presentation was? It would be
good to see if I have the audio lying around, so that I could make it
available for the purposes of the discussion :)

> - The real decision-making power in the GNOME community lies with that group of people who build the core packages. This group will define the direction of the GNOME Desktop. Nobody else, just this group. 
> - There are other people who are not core-package builders who have done good work for the Desktop, and have therefore gained respect. However, these people are ancillary and do not have direction-influencing roles. This is not necessarily a view of how things should be, just a reflection of how things are. 
> - The future lies in individual volunteerism. The involvement of companies is only good in the short-term but is not good for the long-term future. 

Yeah, I'd like to think that people who are not core-package builders
but do good work, eventually become core contributors. In a way, that's
how OS works for the most part. You're absolutely correct about the
future lying in individual volunteerism though.

> Others can correct me if I got hold of the wrong end of the stick, but that's what I took away from the presentation. I thought that the above points and values might have been good in the startup phase of the GNOME community, but that for the Desktop to achieve maturity, to thrive and prosper, and to rival commercial Desktops, then a broader, more inclusive set of shared values has to emerge. Directional strategy must be a multi-disciplinary activity, involving people who are experts in their
> relevant fields, and the more key disciplines that are involved in the directional strategy the better. My opinion, of course, as a non-core-package-builder. 

I think GNOME has improved over the last couple of months, really
beginning to interact with other communities - the work on
freedesktop.org with the X Server guys, and the KDE developers is
definitely important to GNOME. I guess the hard part is letting people
in on pretty key decisions, that perhaps are marginal contributors - I'd
like to think that all suggestions are at least digested a little before
being dismissed.

One of the things I'd really like us to get moving is the idea of a
roadmap, however rough and ready it might be. I'd like to get the
perception that we're planning for the future, in an attempt to
encourage more people to the desktop, and give them the carrot of
something concrete to work on as a step into GNOME development.


Glynn