Public visibility and component repository

["Owen Fraser-Green" <owen discobabe net>]

Hi,

I'm new to this list and in fact to GNOME development as a whole but I've 
been drawn here because of a feeling that what Bonobo represents is 
the "right" way to unify the architecture of the GIMP components and 
introduce some genuine object reuse. I've spent much of today looking 
through the GNOME CVS tree especially at those projects which I had 
expected to make extensive use of bonobo components such as multimedia 
applications. I was both dissappointed at the lack of use of Bonobo 
components as well as frustrated at the amount of code duplication that 
exists between so many of the GNOME projects. The latter seems symptomatic 
of the common open source mentality of "Foo almost does what I want except 
I don't like the placement of the buttons so I'll write a new one from 
scratch". 

I feel there are two reasons for this, firstly because there seems to be a 
lack of understanding of what Bonobo actually is and what benefit it can 
bring in terms of simplifying applications and paving the way for component 
reuse in future projects.

Secondly, it seems as though in order to find out if there is a bonobo 
component which already does what I want I have to route the CVS tree for 
possible Bonobo user candidates to see if they have what I want, and either 
rip out the component or use their entire application as dependancy to my 
application.

As I said before I'm completely new to this arena and maybe someone can 
point me in the direction of Bonobo's answer to Perl's CPAN. Also I 
understand that Bonobo is still a moving target and may form an unsuitable 
base for other moving targets but I can't help but feel that the Bonobo 
project could benefit from openening itself up a bit more to the public 
with a web site advocating the use Bonobo and providing developers 
resources for integrating existing Bonobo components into their projects as 
well as develop new components. Additionally I've been wondering if it 
would be appropriate to add a Bonobo component channel to the Ximian Red 
Carpet updater application to provide a component repository.

If the subscribers to this list feel this is a good idea to form a web site 
and maintain a repository then I would be glad to contribute in any way I 
can.

Regards,
Owen

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     Owen  Fraser-Green             "Hard work never killed anyone,
     owen discobabe net              but why give it a chance?"
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