Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME

[Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu tomeuvizoso net>]

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 10:09, Dave Neary <dneary gnome org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  vision for GNOME 2.x did.Back in February, I posted the following - it
> kind of got lost in the ensuing thread; but I think it's worth breaking
> out into a new discussion (marketing list CCed). Like I say, I'm not
> happy with the "vision" part of this (GNOME everywhere, and invisible)
> because it doesn't offer a destination - it doesn't help anyone make
> decisions about what's important - in the way that the "simple, usable,
> beautiful" But perhaps it's the beginning of a vision that we can work on?
>
> Juanjo Marin wrote:
>> > Anyway, the original message of this thread
>> > is that GNOME doesn't have long term goals.
>
> Proposed short-to-mid-term goal: Make the GNOME platform exciting to
> alpha-dog application developers & thought leaders.
>
> Proposed community mantra: Beautiful computing freedom
>
> Proposed project vision: Hidden in plain sight: Everyone using GNOME,
> no-one noticing
>
>
> The thing about a vision is that it easily makes it easier for you to
> choose the right path at the fork in the road.
>
> Think of the vision of the Palm Pilot as a great example - easy to
> remember, and informs every decision: "Fits in a shirt pocket, syncs
> seamlessly with PC, fast and easy to use, no more than $299".
>
> What functionality is crucial? Seamless sync. Do we need to include a
> certain component? What's its effect on the BOM? Can we still retail at
> $299? Effect on size? Will it still fit in a shirt pocket? If not, no.
>
> The hidden in plain sight vision has an element of that, but then it
> doesn't provide any "use" vision, which is the biggest part of the
> problem we have on the user interface.
>
>
> Are we a middleware & platform project? Or do we still produce
> compelling user interfaces? If so, for whom, in what circumstances?
>
> We probably could have had moblin be "GNOME Netbook". We probably could
> have had Maemo be "GNOME Smartphone". Or Sugar be "GNOME Education".
>
> We probably could have had MeeGo be "GNOME Mobile", but our project
> wasn't the obvious place to go, because we don't seem to know what we're
> providing any more. And so we're losing stewardship (and control) of
> these great GNOME-related projects to the Linux Foundation, or to Intel
> & Nokia, or to distributions.
>
> If we give GNOME a clear vision, and projects like Sugar, MeeGo, Maemo
> and moblin recognise their goals in that vision, then the GNOME project
> becomes a natural place to concentrate efforts again.

Hmm, how would that be better that what we have now? I'm personally
comfortable with GNOME being our upstream.

We realize that the GNOME desktop is the preferred UI for the GNOME
platform but we have found GNOME maintainers quite friendly when we
have proposed patches so it suits Sugar better.

What I would really like to keep improving is in GNOME articulating
goals that match Sugar's. An example of a goal in common is improving
the support for glue languages such as JS and Python, this is great
for us. An example of a non-goal in GNOME that is very important for
its downstream desktops is applications providing the core of their
functionality as a shared library, so we can provide alternative user
experiences without having to sprinkle #ifdef HILDON or #ifdef SUGAR
all around the codebase.

Regards,

Tomeu

> Cheers,
> Dave.
>
>
> --
> Dave Neary
> GNOME Foundation member
> dneary gnome org
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