Re: Expanding the projects we support

[Allan Day <aday gnome org>]

Hi Pascal,

Pascal Terjan <pterjan gmail com> wrote:
...
> What about the other side, libraries/tools (developed for example as part of freedesktop) but which are 
> used by the GNOME platform, is providing those tools also considered a contribution to GNOME?
> I think usually this is not a problem as people will contribute to their integration in GNOME in addition 
> to contributing to them but it may be worth calling out.

For libraries, the main example we were thinking of were things that
extend the platform - bindings, extra tools, and so on. Libraries
which are part of the platform but not developed directly by us seems
like a separate category; it's certainly interesting and something
that would be good to support. We should think about that.

Note that we will only be accepting projects that don't already have
an organisation behind them - we won't be accepting LibreOffice or
Blender or anything like that. :)

> I am worried about about the maintenance of the list and the feeling that it will necessarily be 
> arbitrary/incomplete at any time and get worse over time (what if it includes some major software using 
> GNOME technologies and next year they decide to rewrite it using qt?)

That's a good question. In terms of completeness, the idea is that
projects will have to apply, like individuals have to apply for
Foundation membership - so we're not really trying to be complete.

For removals, we might well end up renewing membership on a fixed time
frame, like we do for Foundation membership, but we'll have to see how
things go.

> On our side if we see people applying who mostly work on something not on the list but which we feel could 
> belong there, will the rules be flexible enough or will there be a simple escalation path?

The plan is to have a new committee handle applications to the
extended software group. So, yes - if someone applied for Foundation
membership and they need to get their project included first, you
could just refer them to the other committee (mostly likely through an
application form they can fill in).

Thanks,

Allan