Re: question for candidates

[Sriram Ramkrishna <sri ramkrishna me>]

Pardon my late reply.

On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Andy Tai <atai gnu org> wrote:

Hi, I would like to post this question to the candidates:

GNOME's core toolkit, gtk+, is used by numerous projects.  Currently gtk+ development seems to be driven mainly by the GNOME desktop.  However, gtk+ also play critical roles in other free software projects, like MATE, XFCE, and the Cinnamon desktop, and large applications like GIMP, Inkscape, etc.

I think inclusivity of these projects are very important.  Embracing these other projects is an important step in making sure that GTK+ and GLib are healthy eco-systems that projects downstream can depend on.
 

What are your views on the participation of the people of these projects, as stake holders in the direction of gtk+, in the GNOME Foundation?  Should the GNOME Foundation encourage (reach out to) these people to get them involved in the GNOME Foundation so they also have a say and even contribute to gtk+ so gtk+ can continue to serve their needs well, important for the continuing successes of gtk+ in the free software world?

We are already reaching out and we've made a little progress.  During the West Coast Hackfest, thanks to Allan Day, we were able to invite one of the ElementaryOS designers over, and he was able to spend a couple days with us.  One of the positive outcomes was that we are hopefully set to eliminate ElementaryOS's private widget set library and use GNOME's.  In turn, there are several widgets that Matthias have identified that was useful for GTK+.  So here is an excellent example of how diversity solves problems.  I can say that both GNOME and ElementaryOS folks were quite enthusiastic afterwards from my conversations with them.[1]

A couple comments on the West Coast Hackfest - the hackfest is geared to be outward facing.  Most of our conferences and hackfests are quite insular and internal.  You want GNOME hackers to be exposed to people who use our software or might want to use our software.  In turn, we want to really highlight the benefits of using the GNOME stack. We don't do enough of this.  I hope the next year, we can work on a more aggressive conference instead of a hackfest that will bring more attention to the GNOME eco-system to people who are developing either software solutions or turnkey hardware appliances like kiosks.  In general, thanks to the hard work of Tiffany, Christian Hergert, and Cosimo we had successful hackfest and is a good base.

Now regarding foundation and these other projects. I've long thought that need to find a way to support these projects.  I have a proposal in the works that will suggest that the Foundation will help pay for hackfests that does not benefit GNOME the product (e.g. the desktop) but does benefit GNOME the eco-system.  The idea is that in exchange for the money, that everyone would participate in working in the lower levels of the stack and not necessarily the design.  This is controversial because of using our finances, but there are questions on whether this will dilute the brand.  But that is a separate discussion.

Nothing excites me more than seeing GNOME partner wtih more people and organization, being diversified will help hopefully attract more adboard members as well.  We live in interesting times, we have many projects that have pick up the "design the desktop as a product" bug, and they have choosen GNOME as the basis of it.  I think that is  fantastic.

sri

[1] See my blog post on West Coast Hackfest, the release notes for the last GTK+ release, and Matthias's post on West Coast Hackfest

--
Andy Tai, atai atai org
Year 2010 民國99年
自動的精神力是信仰與覺悟
自動的行為力是勞動與技能

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