Re: OPW; Where does the 500$ for each GSoC goes?

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

hi;

On 16 September 2014 14:22, Sébastien Wilmet <swilmet gnome org> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 01:27:47PM +0100, Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> > On 16 September 2014 12:01, Sébastien Wilmet <swilmet gnome org> wrote:
> > > I know that with a good documentation (i.e. a book) and good development
> > > tools, developers will be more attracted by the Gnome platform.
> >
> > that's not nearly enough.
>
> It's maybe not enough, but it's needed too in my opinion.

sure, again: you should feel free to start a fund raiser to allow a
book to be written.

> > the existence of a book during GNOME 1.x hasn't really changed much in
> > our DX, and books for free software platforms tend to go out of date
> > by the time they hit the printer.
>
> GLib, GObject and GIO are pretty stable. If you read the GLib section in
> GGAD, you'll see that it's still relevant, just a minor update is
> needed.

that doesn't even cover what's required to write a modern application
or library.

it's also very much C-centered, whereas we want more people to use C
only for core library components.

> For GTK+, Benjamin explained last year that the plan is to have GTK+ 4
> as stable as GTK+ 2. Indeed GTK+ 3 is quite unstable, so writing lots of
> details about GTK+ will probably be quickly outdated (API deprecations
> is another problem).

GTK+ 4.x won't be as stable as 2.x out the box. 2.x is stable because
it took a whole lot of people 9 years to get it to "stability", that
is to say: to be replaced by GTK+ 3.x. once we'll do a 4.x cycle, 3.x
will become "as stable" as 2.x is now — bug fixes only, no new API, no
deprecations. in the meantime, 4.x will require deprecations, new API,
and changes of the internals.

> > > There are important areas where Gnome is lacking. If the Gnome
> > > Foundation can give a little more financial support to improve those
> > > weak areas, it would be great.
> >
> > please, enumerate them, and have actionable deliverables to verify
> > that they are, in effect, improving weak areas.
>
> - Improving the developer experience. Christian Hergert is working on
>   Builder and he will soon start a fundraising campaign. This is an
> actionable item.
>
> - Writing a book, another actionable item.

great; can you own the last part?

> - When a company is interested by the Gnome platform, help them.

I don't understand why you think this does not happen already.

as an employee of a company using GNOME, I can assure you we have all
the help we ask for from everyone in the community.

> Philip said for example:

Philip has scarcely any idea about any of this stuff, as he already
demonstrated plenty of times, couple with an overinflated sense of his
importance and contributions.

> <pvanhoof> My issue with gnome is that it wants to hate trying to help the
>            (european) commercial world
> <pvanhoof> gtk+ didn't really help the maemo-gtk+ stuff
> <pvanhoof> That as a result meant that meego-harmattan got qt based
> <pvanhoof> That's history, of course. But we did try hard to convince people at
>            redhat like mclasen of the necessity to cooperate with nokia back then
> <pvanhoof> Yes we did

that's, quite frankly, a fairly sizable pile of bull.

Philip has absolutely no clue whatsoever about most of the decisions
that went behind the transitions from Maemo to Qt.

> > I'd contend that maintainers have already one job to do, and they are
> > not really good at writing documentation for beginners.
>
> GGAD is well written, and was written by a core GTK+/Gnome developer.

that's arguable, as much as I liked the book and Havoc's style.

the size and scope of the platform, nevertheless, has changed pretty
drastically from 1999.

why don't we have more books?

> A good scientist should be able to explain his or her work to a young
> child, there was a citation about that.

that's an oversimplification of a lot of things.

> > nevertheless, we do have core developers writing documentation — in
> > the form of wiki pages, like the HowDoI documents, or the API
> > reference examples.
>
> A book would have the advantage that it's a single source of
> documentation for a beginner.

that's, I guess, why there's only one book about Python, or one book
about, MySQL, or one book about C++, or one book about *any*
technology.

> Currently the documentation is cluttered:
> a beginner needs to read this there, that there, in the API reference,
> in the wiki, in another tutorial found on the web, etc.

then we should improve developer.gnome.org, and centralise our
documentation. everything under gnome.org is pretty authoritative, so
we can start from there (also because we control it).

now, I'm not overly sold on the entire issue, here; people use Stack
Overflow, and people can use Google. whenever developers have a
problem, they'll use everything they can to solve it, wherever it is.

again, tho: all you list is a good place as any to start. I suggest
you start working on it, and get other people to help you. if it's
fund you need, we can definitely plan a fund raising drive.

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
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[ ] ebassi [ gmail com]