Re: Language Bindings.

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Miguel de Icaza">

> Hello members of the Gnome Release Team,
> 
>    [Please forward to the appropriate list if am missing people]
> 
>    Over the past year the Gtk# group had personal difficulties with
> Murray Cumming which is in charge of Language Bindings for Gnome.  We
> believe that we are being treated unfairly and that our stable binding
> has not been shipped with Gnome because of him.
> 
>    Given this personal clash, I would like to ask the Release Team that
> the decision to include a binding on the release rests in a larger group
> of people, and not in a single individual.  
> 
>    I proposed that the tasks of the language binding release maintainer
> should be subsumed to the release team.  But maybe just transfering the
> decision of shipping a binding to a larger group is all that matters.

Miguel,

I will preface this by saying that Murray and I do not always mix well. We
*try* most of the time, but it doesn't always work. We're just... different.
Also, I'm not really speaking for the release team here, just giving my
view.

In some ways, I think the Bindings suite guidelines/standards were defined
without enough input from all of the stakeholders (ie. bindings authors).
Murray has a tough role to play, and sometimes the shit hits the fan. On the
whole, I think Murray has done an excellent job pulling everything together
and making sure we have great Bindings releases.

This particular case seems to revolve around the Gtk# hackers targeting the
previous GNOME Developer Platform APIs, most obviously when GTK+ itself was
revved with the new file dialogues. I tend to think the Bindings guidlines
are totally appropriate here - if the Bindings intend to be the GNOME devel
platforms for their respective languages, they really ought to be up to date
with the rest of the platform. I am faaaairly sure most members of the team
would share this opinion, but they can chime in if they do or don't. I'm not
sure if this means they *must* be excluded.

Miguel and Murray - I'd encourage both of you to broaden your audience if
you hit a decision making snag like this. Sound it out, and it doesn't have
to be the release team (in most cases, it probably shouldn't be).

I'm sorry that's not a wildly conclusive answer for you - I understand both
sides of the debate, but lean towards the bleeding edge. :-)

Thanks,

- Jeff

-- 
GUADEC 2005: May 29th-31st                           http://2005.guadec.org/
 
  "I rather think of Pat as our linguistic ornithologist here - 'Oh look,
         the brown noddy also nests in the mangrove!'" - John Fleck