Re: [gdm-list] [ConsoleKit] Impact of ConsoleKit deprecation

[Brian Cameron <brian cameron oracle com>]

Lennart:

On 01/27/12 10:06 AM, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> On Fri, 27.01.12 09:54, Brian Cameron (brian cameron oracle com) wrote:
> Free software is not a democracy.

Thank goodness.  Did I ever suggest free software had anything to do
with a democracy?  I personally would not think or suggest that good
communication can only happen in a democracy.

> When Jon and I decided to deprecate CK we looked for somebody who did a
> good job in maintaining this kind of low-level software, and we found a
> very capable person in Martin Pitt who we have worked with in the past,
> and has regularly contributed fixes to low-level components of the free
> desktop stack.

I am glad it is clear that maintainers in the GNOME community feel
comfortable making such decisions without identifying stakeholders
or making an effort to communicate with them.  I think it is easier
to have the right expectations when this is clear.

> We think Martin is very qualified as a maintainer for
> this and Martin Pitt was willing to take over, and invest the time
> necessary to maintain CK.

Really, I am not unhappy with the decision.  I am sure Martin will do a
great job and am looking forward to working with him.  I do trust your
and Jon's ability to judge a good maintainer.

If I am unhappy at anything, it is more the general lack of effort at
communication at a time when the GNOME community is doing so much
re-engineering of low level interfaces.  My personal concern is that I
worry that some stakeholders may loose interest in cooperative efforts
if communication gets too bad.  I think there already has been too much
fragmentation in the FreeDesktop display manager space since GDM 2.22
made ConsoleKit a hard dependency.  Better technical leadership would
likely have avoided this fragmentation.

But, what do I know?  Sometimes fragmentation can be good for a free
software project.  I think the egcs project ended up making the gcc
compiler a better product in the long run, for example.

> Please work with Martin Pitt as soon as he takes over control, I am sure
> he'll be happy to work with you, too.

Cool.

Brian