Re: GNOME 1.4 package list

[Ian Peters <itp flux gnome org>]

On Mon, Aug 28, 2000 at 03:51:19PM -0700, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> 
> > Gnomoku is a Gtk--/Gnome-- based Gomoku game.
> 
> This sounds like something we might want in gnome-games. Any reason
> not to do that? (Assuming we resolve the Gnome-- issue).

I've been avoiding putting new things into gnome-games.  Every time
someone approaches me wanting to do this (usually desiring wider
distribution), one of two things happens:

1) the author gets annoyed by the fact that gnome-games ships as a
   package, and not just when they want to

2) the author disappears and doesn't want to worry about their code
anymore, as it's now part of gnome-games

> Other than gnome-games, I don't think we should include arbitrary
> other games with the core desktop (a few amusements are expected,
> anything past that should be considered extras I think).

Agree.  I think we've got plenty of games already, and not every
program needs to be part of GNOME proper (especially if we think
we're promoting GNOME as a development platform that third parties
can use ;)

In fact, I question the need to make every usable and quasi-stable
GNOME program part of the "official" release.  It seems to me we've
got enough work to do in stabilizing the GNOME libraries (especially
since this list grows every release), the core desktop programs, and
the basic modules.  Although I'm in favor of encouraging use of
these programs through the software map and their inclusion in
binary distributions of GNOME, what does making them part of the
official release mean (other than that you have more variables to
attempt to manage to make the release happen)?

I realize I may be completely in the wrong here and quickly beaten
down, but I'd just like to raise the issue before we add every
program we can think of to the list and make this release orders
of magnitude more difficult than it should be.

-- 
Ian Peters
itp@helixcode.com