Re: GNOME now

[Peteris Krisjanis <pecisk gmail com>]

T , 2012.11.14. 17:10 +0100, Seif Lotfy rakstīja:
> Quoting Stormy Peters comment on a recent blog post concerning GNOME:
> " We haven’t shared our vision or our roadmap for the future. Where’s
> the product going? What problem are we trying to solve? How are we
> going to do that?"

I think we are in same business as Apple - we are trying to offer
unified user experience. Difference between us and Apple though is that
(in my opinion) most of us strongly believe that openness/freedom and
consistent user experience (trough user interface and system design and
behavior) can be in same boat (versus "Walled garden" and "guided
experience"). I think we can all agree that's our vision.

Practically it comes out as "default" set of design and settings. Users
are free to extend it with extensions, different themes, changing
settings, etc. And there are users who won't change a thing - and that's
fine too. We care about both kind of users. Yet we care a *little* more
about first set of users because they are not that experienced and they
usually want just the job done.

In one sentence, we are trying to provide computer environment in which
every human being can work with. "Computer for humans". Sounds trivial
and banal, but as our experience tells us, this balance is hard to reach
to. However, in my opinion, open source/free software strategy, with all
it's faults, is very well positioned to deliver just that.

There's is no big roadmap (and that's not necessary have been a bad
thing so far) because quite a big part of this project is steered by
volunteers. It is hard to plan something if you are not sure if you will
have time to work on project next year. However, there are number of
guidelines we are following, also release team decisions, which are
influenced by offers to include different kind of software or technology
in core.

However, if we aim to have little more impact on market, there are
several things which could improve things in my opinion:
1. If we go GNOME OS route, then we should have solid definition what
that actually means - starting with minimal as possible. Application
wise that means that we have text editor who can do that and that, we
have media player who can do that and that. Of course, you can describe
*everything*, but having such definition in a form of
unit/integration/gui tests would help to track regressions and we would
understand where we stand. If you are regular on desktop-devel list you
have seen some sad clashes between maitaners/decision makers and another
set of developers/super users who "didn't see that coming". Having such
definition would at least minimise confusion.
2. We have more dedicated QA team, which works with applications to
provide solid way to test their apps for regressions, who would oversee
feedback from different sources of users.

Respectfully,
Peteris Krisjanis.