Re: Remove "About Me" for 3.0?

[William Jon McCann <william jon mccann gmail com>]

Hey Frederic,

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 2:43 AM, Frederic Peters <fpeters gnome org> wrote:
> Hi Jon,
>
>> Linux is clearly part of the GNOME OS just like it is in the
>> Moblin/Meego, Android, and WebOS operating systems.  So is D-Bus,
>> pulseaudio, etc.  You can't write a great application for just Linux,
>> nor for GNU/Linux.  But if we set our minds to it we can do it in
>> GNOME.
>>
>> There will still be external efforts to port GNOME to BSD, Solaris, or
>> Hurd but we should really acknowledge that GNOME is written for Linux.
>
> Sure you won't get as much opposition writing this on gnomecc-list
> than on desktop-devel-list, but you should well know this mindset is
> not the only one, as shown repeatedly, in the recent GNOME Shell
> discussion, or earlier when it was about DeviceKit, or PulseAudio,
> or...

Oh I know.  But really the people who disagree can just pretend that
GNOME is a bucket bits and adapt it as they wish - just as they do
today.

> What kind of action would you want to see from the release team (for
> technical aspects), the marketing team (as there's "desktop for your
> GNU/Linux or UNIX computer" on the gnome.org homepage), and other
> parties, on this matter?

Those are great questions.  Honestly, I'm not sure yet.  I am pretty
sure I'm not ready to have a big flamewar about it though.  But I do
think it is a good thing for the project to start thinking about.

In fact, the marketing discussions around GNOME 3 made it very clear
that we don't really have a good definition of what GNOME is.  We're
this "environment" thing but with part of a platform (not a full one).
 Then distros take it and "add value" by modifying it however they
wish.  So, basically we have this wonderful community and sharing
between lots of different companies in GNOME and that doesn't help one
bit when we have a terribly fractured marketplace of different vendors
of GNOME.  And some vendors that think they can go off and do it
without upstream.  I think there is no way we're going to be able to
make something great and compete with Apple, Google, and Microsoft if
we all go it alone.  But I think we can make a stand together.

Jon