Re: RadioActive 1.0 "Fly me to the GNOME"

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

jacob helixcode com (Jacob "Ulysses" Berkman) writes:

> Gregory Leblanc <gleblanc cu-portland edu> writes:
> 
> > > It fixes the rough edges of 0.11, and introduces several user interface
> > > enhancements, most of them inspired by Stanislav Brabec <utx penguin cz>.
> > > As you can guess from the code name, this is the release I intend
> > > GNOME-Extras 1.4 to include.
> > > 
> > > RadioActive requires a Video4Linux-enabled kernel. This appeared
> > 
> > 
> > I would have to say that I'm opposed to including this in any "official"
> > way as a part of GNOME.  This application is Linux specific, while GNOME
> > runs on just about any *nix platform.  If we include applications like
> > this, we're endorsing Linux as our platform of choice.
> 
> There are quite a few linux only things in GNOME.  floppy-buddy
> (gfloppy), mem-buddy (memprof), stuff in gmc, etc.  I think there is
> some other stuff too.

Though I'm not sure how memprof counts as being "in GNOME", except
that possibly that Helix ships it :-)

But, my opinion is, having a Linux-specific part of even core GNOME
components is OK, as long as:

 - It does not provide essential functionality but rather enhanced
   functionality that can't be done in a portable way.

 - It does not break compilation on non-Linux platforms

Gratuitously using linuxisms (like the ones that I slipped into a
recent control-center release inadvertently) should be avoided, but we
should not limit functionality on our biggest platform simply because
we can't do things in a 100% portable way across all platforms.

For the extra-apps, I think being Linux specific is perfectly OK as
long as it is made clear up front. (If we have a list of extra apps,
we probably should note platform specific applications in that list.)

What we are saying about extra apps is not that they work
on any system GNOME works on, but rather that on the systems
that they work on, they work properly with the GNOME release.

Regards,
                                        owen