Re: Let's look into the future (aka "The ``Martin is back'' mail")

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Hi,

First of all welcome back. ;-)


Martin Baulig <martin home-of-linux org> writes: 
>   a) we declare libgnome and libgnomeui as officially dead

As everyone knows I think this is more or less right, but it's not
feasible in the GNOME 2 timeframe. Library bundling is bad; let app
authors use the libs that make sense. Put code in functional
categories and make the libraries reflect those. But we have to keep a
lot of gnome-libs stuff for back compat.

There are still some general-purpose things in gnome-libs that haven't
made it into other libs yet (GnomeClient, GnomeDruid).  And I can see
some value in the idea of a gnome_init() that sets up a bunch of other
libs and saves some bother.

But in general, gnome-libs just limits our flexibility and causes
bloat, IMHO.
 
>   However, let's forget this whole flamewar and assume that the last two weeks
>   simply did not happen. And to avoid yet another flamewar, if there's anyone
>   out there who still doubts that I'm the libgnome(ui) maintainer, speak up
>   now or keep your mouth shut until we have that damn thing
>   released.

This would not help with the flamewar. Neither did anyone doubt that
you were maintainer as part of the flamewar.

You are the maintainer; can you singlehandedly change the config
solution for the whole GNOME Project? No you can't. It is not a right
of the gnome-libs maintainer.

You are the maintainer; can you make big changes impacting everyone
without public discussion? No you can't. That isn't what maintainers
do either.  Part of the job is to communicate about the module being
maintained.

Anyhow, I am happy to reaffirm that you are the maintainer, because
you're doing a great job, but it has to be crystal clear what that
means. It is not a license to decide the whole future of the GNOME
platform. We do that as a project.
 
>   Assuming the I'm still release coordinator, the new API freeze date is now
>   Wednesday August 15th or still July 32nd if we still make it until
>   that date.

You and Sander are coordinators together, so I'm assuming he agreed to
this date?

>   Before we lost two weeks in this flamewar, I was almost confident that we
>   could actually make it until the July 31st freeze, so add the two wasted
>   weeks and you'll get Aug 15th.

Two weeks? The flamewar started 1 week ago dude. ;-) I know it seemed
 longer. ;-)

> Ok, that's it for the moment, it's getting party time ....

Have fun. ;-)

Also, please don't screw your schoolwork over GNOME. It is very much
not worth it. Take the time you need to do the schoolwork.

Havoc