Re: What is GNOME not going to be?

[Frederick I Gleef <gleef capital net>]

On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, Nelson Minar wrote:
> >>IMHO, GNOME tries to build the ``best'' GUI environment, so the priority
> >>should be at getting a good 
> >I think this just about sums it up. Gnome *will* be the best, and
> >thus we will need to incorporate a metadata implementation of some kind.
> 
> I started a big free software project about four years ago, Swarm. We
> had a meeting of potential users to spec out what was needed. It was
> an exhilirating meeting, lots of ideas about what our fancy software
> could do. But then one of the people at the meeting stopped us cold
> with a simple question: "What is Swarm *not* going to be?"
> 
> 
> I want to raise the same question here: what is GNOME *not* going to
> be? I'm a newcomer to GNOME and so far I'm very impressed. But the
> discussion I've seen on this list worries me, because it seems that no
> one has any ideas what the boundaries of GNOME are. It's a giant
> thing. A GUI, an application launcher, a session manager, a whole
> bunch of new and converted apps. Fine. But it's also a CORBA ORB, and
> a database front end, and now it might even be a whole new conception
> of what a file is in Unix.
> 
> What is it that won't go into GNOME?

I like this question.  Here's my completely off-the-cuff, unofficial
answer to it.  First, there are two things here that are often called
GNOME.  There is the GNOME project, and the GNOME system.

The GNOME project will:
  * Work on the GNOME system
  * Work on interactivity between the GNOME system and non-GNOME stuff
It will not:
  * Work on things that don't talk to the GNOME system

Granted, this is pretty broad, but there are lots of people here, each
doing little or big things.

The GNOME system is a more directed entity.  To quote the GNOME Manifesto,
"GNOME is an Open Source desktop environment built from components that
meet the Open Source guidelines in full."

The way I read this, GNOME (the system) will NOT have:
  * An operating system
  * A window manager
  * A GUI (it merely facilitates GUI programming, by providing an API)
  * Major applications (it will have system tools, and other small
    GUI and CLI programs, but most of the apps you see are on top of
    GNOME, not GNOME itself; i.e. part of the GNOME project, but not the
    GNOME system).
  * Hardware (although the project might have T-shirts :-)
  * A programming language (it will have APIs in several)
  * Non-free software
  * Rutabega (Or pachyderms for that matter)

I am sure that I am missing relevant things that are not part of GNOME,
but that's certainly the start of the list.

GNOME (the system) is the GNU Network Object Model Environment.  

-Gleef