Re: gtkhtml

[Ali Abdin <aliabdin aucegypt edu>]

> Federico was just replying to statements he found provocative and unfounded,
> while I agree that
> his response wasn't very diplomatic, it is hard to claim a moral superiority
> when replying in the same
> vein-

Umm - When Federico says something you should not view him as a 'Helix Code' employee - he should be viewed as one of the _ORIGINAL_ GNOME members who has a lot of clout in the community. 

Federico's position is _NOT_ Helix Code's position. Remember each and every developer has their own mind to form opinions with. So just because Federico spouts things, its not 'just because' he is a Helix Code Employee.
 
> > Folks, it's very obvious to me that our arguments are not being heard.
> > Helix, the "real" Gnome, has shifted their policy from ignoring us to
> > becoming outright beligerant.  This is a joke to them.  Sign me up for those
> > commercial services, fellas.  I want to PAY for my abuse!
> 
> This is a bit on the inflamatory side isn't it? After reading recent posts of
> Ettore and Steven it seems to me they are both willing to take this forward in a
> constructive manner, and cooperate on making gtkhtml compilable both with and
> without the added gnome-functionality.
> 
> As for who the real GNOME is, please Mathew I expected better than this from
> you. While a lot of hackers work for Helix, there are more who are not.

By the way - usually what happens is people come up with all sorts of funky ideas/suggestions to Miguel. He usually doesn't give a shit (based on my understanding of him) unless he sees ACTUAL code or something in that direction.

You should read Havoc Pennington's essay on working with open source projects. Specifically, look at the section of 'Backseat Coders'. A lot of times people come in and want 'X feature' or want to 'remove dependency on <X>' just for their sake - yet they do not wish to take the actual time to do it themselves. This pisses off GNOME developers (who might not be Helix Code employees) because they have their own agenda/work to do.
 
> > Question:
> > What's going to happen to your precious GtkHTML when Gecko is ready for Prime
> > Time?  Or if Operasoft is really going to "widgetize" Opera?
> 
> There is a couple of issues here:
> a) gtkhtm is LGPL which means people can use it with their GPL projects without
> worrying about
> about license issues.
> b) gtkhtml isn't meant to be a gecko competitor, it is meant as a light HTMl
> widget to be used in projects which are in need of such.  Nautilus for instance
> will be using gecko as its primary internet browsing engine and gtkhtml to view
> lighter information such as  GNOME documentation.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt. Wrong. Nautilus /might/ be using gecko to render the help stuff. I know this because I'm considered a kind of pseudo-maintainer who is trying to get the help stuff in a decent shape in Nautilus (yes! somebody is working on it! If anyone wants to help - feel free to send in patches)

Unless some 'miracle' (major maintenance work) happens with the 'ntl-web-browser' component (basically the component that interfaces with gtkhtml) it will be difficult to use. Then again, the Gecko component ain't working with the help stuff...so we'll have to see :)