Hi Olav,
Hello Seif,
Reading your motivation I think I understand what you mean, but would
like to know for sure. As such, I'd appreciate if you could expand some
more on your motivation. Further, though I think I understand, I'm
purposely asking very open ended questions (to avoid suggestive ones).
My goal is not to have a discussion on this with you or others, purely
to better understand your motivation.
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 10:59:35AM +0200, Seif Lotfy wrote:
> Motivation:
>
> My reasons for running for GNOME board are as follows:
> • Encourage more cooperation on design between RH and Canonical.
What do you mean concretely (design of what)? Why RH and Canonical
specifically?
I left out Intel, Nokia, Novell and others because their main focus now is on Meego which on a design level I do not consider a GNOME project.
Currently RH and Canonical both have started their own design & user experience to improve the usability of GNOME. Both however seem to be heading to the same goal but with different designs that could on a shallow level end up leaving GNOME in an diverging state (Shell vs Unity). Both should start cooperating on the design level. One could start off with a design board combining selected and competent representatives from community and companies, whose first objective is to rewrite the HIG.
> • Avoid fragmentation by helping to build consensus around a unified
> vision for GNOME's future to prevent a GNOME divergence into 2.30 -and
> GNOME 3 base.
What do you think is lacking now?
What is lacking is a vision of what GNOME 3 should be. Where is it heading? Who is the target of the GNOME 3 desktop? How is the current GNOME accepted by the community. There seems to be some disagreements on several issues concerning design and technical aspects, which are leading to frictions between upstream and downstream development.
> • Bring up and fix issues with GNOME that are being ignored or
> shunned.
Can you list these?
I will just be frank here...
• Translation shifting from upstream to downstream ?
• Development infrastructure limiting upstream contribution.
• Canonical's Unity development, what does it mean for GNOME ?
• Red Hat's control over GNOME Shell ?
• Meego being a competition or a GNOME sister project ?
• Smaller companies involvement into GNOME decisions
• How much of GNOME is community driven and how much is company driven
• Is the GNOME community forced to assimilate with decisions made by those companies?
• More...
> • Work on letting GNOME shell be lead by the community.
Can you expand on what you want changed?
Currently all GNOME Shell decisions are taken by Red Hat, thus limiting the community's technical as well as design contribution. I suggest starting a technical board with equal amounts of representatives of companies as and community whose members are significantly competent for the roles. Those should drive the technical development of GNOME Shell forward.
> • I stand for innovation in GNOME.
What is lacking now, and what do want to do when being part of the
board?
Recently GNOME has not been attracting many new developers. It is because its current development state doesn't allow any new innovation to settle in. GNOME being run mostly by people representing bigger companies no risks are being taken and thinking out of the box is usually categorized as such. While understandable it leaves GNOME in a state where a lot of functionalities are desired but not deployable. Innovations are usually brought up by smaller companies such as Collabora, Codethink, Landeo, Igalia and others. We should allow them more responsibilities in decision taking when it comes to GNOME's emerging technologies.
> Don't hesitate to ask me questions when the lines are open.
done
Hope I answered your questions.
--
Regards,
Olav
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