Re: Money spending, questions for the candidates

[Philip Van Hoof <pvanhoof gnome org>]

On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 11:52 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

> Anyway, my short answer to most of your mail is that every team / group
> is only mandated to do whatever the actual people doing the work like to
> do.  No one knows better than me as the Pango maintainer that what Pango
> needs most. 

And that's fine and the right way, indeed.

Then the problem starts: integration of the different components,
decisions about how this integration will take place, helping future
customers with picking the right components, ...

For example D-Bus APIs for desktop services 

A good example (yet it's just an example) are the differences between
Network Manager's D-Bus API and many competing network management and
detection mechanisms.

A reason for that might be that Network Manager right now doesn't tell
me about the latency nor the cost of the (mobile) connection. With some
discussion at the level of GNOME Mobile, it would probably have come to
the surface that things like these are needed for mobiles.

Multiple platform providers are each using their own API for the purpose
of this. Access has something, Maemo has Conic, the desktop has Network
Manager. This is 'not' good and more complicated for app. developers.

I know most people will now think: "yes but THEY should have ...." (fill
in the dots). The reality is different. And sometimes it's good to also
open your eyes for the actual situation.


I can make a very long list of examples (and I can point to code, if
necessary). I already promised not to make such long philosophic E-mails
anymore.


-- 
Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer
home: me at pvanhoof dot be 
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org 
http://pvanhoof.be/blog
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