RE: Gnome Packaging

[Charles Goodwin <charlie xwt org>]

On Sun, 2003-12-07 at 02:17, Murray Cumming Comneon com wrote:
> Apart from debian users, who seem used to choosing their packages in boring
> detail, I don't think this is likely to make much difference to most people.
> We want GNOME to include everything that the user needs, and that's what the
> distro wants as well. So I don't think most distros will even bother to ask
> the user whether he really wants all the things that he's likely to need.

Ergo the distros would include everything irrespective of how things are
packaged.

> Why would people want "cut out evolution". This suggests either
> - There is a shortage of disk space. I don't think there is.
> - We are forcing something on distros. I think distros do what they like.

I've just read it a fair bit since the proposal to include Evolution was
announced.  Some people like lean, mean machines.  This type of
applicaiton association would cater more to them I guess.

Another benefit of such a devolution would be that authority can be
easily delegated based on each group.  I could ramble on about what that
means for quite some time, but the crux is that the formal relationships
give a little more organisation to the whole Gnome structure, thus it is
easier to manage.

> I do personally think it's worthwhile to have a separate release set for big
> things like Office

But is Evolution an Office application or a base desktop application?  
If Evolution and it's groupware functionality is present, then surely a
suitable word processor should be present?  Wash, rinse, repeat...

The inclusion of Evolution is treading on some unsteady semantic
ground!  A simple bit of devolution would solve that and introduce some
more structure to Gnome.  Whether extra structure is needed or not,
well, maybe it isn't now but in the future?  Who knows. :)

- Charlie

-- 
Charles Goodwin <charlie xwt org>
XWT Foundation - www.xwt.org