Re: Goal for GNOME Mobile?

[Quim Gil <quim gil nokia com>]

ext David Lefty Schlesinger wrote:
> Peter Robinson wrote:
>> What about collaboration with something like LiMo so that there's less
>> need to expand into kernel space or reinvent the wheel?
> This is certainly something we should be exploring (and I'm bugging the
> LiMo folks to do likewise from the other side). I'd strongly discourage
> the notion that GNOME Mobile should represent a complete solution for
> several reasons: it's duplicative--lots of activity going on in this
> space that GNOME should support rather than compete with; it's
> unrealistic--there's no domain expertise in critical areas like
> telephony, etc.; it's insufficiently focused--we should concentrate on
> getting the existing GNOME technologies, particularly things like GTK,
> working optimally on ARM before we start looking at adding more stuff...

Indeed, down to the kernel sounds like too much to handle.

However, what about the relevant parts of the freedesktop.org "layer"?
GStreamer, Telepathy, Clutter and many more, totally relevant in the
mobile context.

"This is not GNOME", many said in the past and nowadays.

I wonder how good this is for the GNOME PPRR, identity and even survival
in the long term.

These technologies and even the idea of freedesktop.org were born around
GNOME, their individual maintainers have a clear GNOME background and
even involvement, the companies pushing them are in the GNOME context.
If I want to find all of them I just need to go to GUADEC. However, in
the public space and in the minds of IT analysts and decision-makers,
none of these provide awareness or karma points to GNOME.

Note also that these IT people will look at GNOME also in comparison
with Qt (as they did in the desktop, only that in the mobile context
nowadays all numbers and headlines are potentially bigger, see for
instance  http://trolltech.com/about/news/qt-for-s60-announced ). This
comparison is unfair to GTK+ since the Qt API covers a wider
functionality that in the GNOME world is covered... by components under
the freedesktop.org umbrella. In some cases Qt will use the very same
components with a GNOME-ish DNA, wrapped by Qt and looking all Qt to
those IT guys.

So again, how good is the "This is not GNOME" reductionism for the GNOME
project.

At the end we go again to the need of defining what is GNOME and what is
its vision.

GTK+ is essential to the GNOME project but, is it the cornerstone to
sustain the whole building? In the desktop years it was, and this is why
"This is not GNOME" was a clear assumption: you can run GStreamer,
Telepathy and etc with other GUI toolkits on top, they are not dependent
on GTK+, therefore they are not GNOME.

Is this the best strategy to fulfill the GNOME vision in the mobile
context and the forthcoming years, though? But what is the GNOME vision,
again? You see the trap.

PS: All the above takes in consideration only the marketing side. On
more practical things, many of these freedesktop.org projects really
need help (people, money, attention - see for instance the crucial
D-Bus) and in the meantime the GNOME umbrella starts looking
over-covered by corporate backing, specially if the scope keeps being
the strict desktop with all its legacy.

-- 
Quim Gil
marketing manager, open source
Maemo Software @ Nokia