Re: Could a few influential GNOME develoers join gnu-prog-discuss gnu org?

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Wed, 2012-01-18 at 17:32 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
> mention that this particular behaviour is specified:
>     http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/xdg-user-dirs
> 
> They can recommend, but they cannot "specify" anything for us.  In the
> GNU Project we pay attention to standards, and usually we follow them,
> but not automatically or necessarily.  For instance, GNU df and du
> give sizes in k by default, not in 512-byte blocks as POSIX
> "specifies".  Likewise, GCC "violates" the ISO C spec if you don't use
> --pedantic.
> 
> The standards made by POSIX, ISO and freedesktop.org are suggestions.
> They carry some weight because users typically appreciate
> compatibility with standards.  But that's not the only thing users
> appreciate, so a standard is not a command for us to obey.

I don't think Bastien was implying that we have to follow this
behavior simply because it's specified somewhere. In fact, the
front page of freedesktop.org is very clear that it is not a
standards organization. Specification on freedesktop.org aren't
things we have to follow. Rather, they are formal write-ups of
things we've decided to do.

The way the comment was presented (and granted, we're missing
context here) was as if this behavior was a bug. Bastien was
saying it's intentional behavior, and that we've even written
down how it's supposed to work.

--
Shaun