Re: [gnome-flashback] ANNOUNCE: gnome-panel and gnome-flashback-session 3.8.1 release

[Lanoxx <lanoxx gmx net>]

Hi everyone,

I have been following the discussions about releases and Alberts wish
about taking over maintainer ship. Here are my thoughts about this:

I would generally prefer if we could solve this discussion peacefully,
we are just a handful of people and I think we should not waste our
precious time with these small discussions. However, I think Alberts has
very valid arguments. Ultimately it now took more than a month to make
the 3.8.1 release and the EDS fixes are missing. End users don't care if
a variable is named table or grid, but they care if bugs get fixed and
their calendar works or not!

Regarding API/ABI break, I agree with Alberts and Dmitry, we should do
it sooner rather than later. If we merge these patches into master  and
then package an alpha or beta release we will get feedback of downstream
users and we can react to that. The most important users of
libpanel-applet are AFAIK the indicator-applet family and gnome-applets,
patches do exist for them. The other applets should be able to fix any
problems with a few small patches, let them contact us and we can help
them. Alberts has certainly shown that he is willing to help anyone who
asks. If we wait months with every change then we will not be able to
move forward.

Alberts has also shown that he is willing to learn new things and he has
invested by far the most work for gnome-panel, metacity and
gnome-applets in the last few month. I think we should not try to slow
him down but encourage him to continue with his work. If we wants to
maintain gnome-panel he would get my vote. Alberts argument regarding
Flashback is also correct. We need to get to a state where we make
coordinated releases that consist of:

 * gnome-panel
 * metacity
 * gnome-applets

and possibly a future gnome-flashback package with session files as
Alberts has proposed it. Since Alberts has become maintainer for
gnome-applets and metacity it would be a good idea to give him
gnome-panel maintainer rights too.

This being said, I think Philipp also has some valid arguments and he
has a lot of experience so we can learn a lot of things from him.

Cheers
Sebastian