Re: Issuing a press release about GNOME 3

[Dave Neary <bolsh gnome org>]

Hi,

Luis Villa wrote:
> I'm sorry to be so negative, but this is a lousy idea and I think that
> needs to be said. Do not repeat the mistakes of early 2.0 (before we
> got our act together) and KDE 4.0. Be patient; just because Topaz is
> unlikely to happen (I agree) is no reason to rush out and slap 3.0 on
> something.

I think we need to wrap this up as like this, and no more:

We're moving to a 6 month/2 year time-based cycle. Our first 2-year
cycle started in March (that means we're now behind schedule! Ouch!)

2 year cycle: Identify big overriding theme - current low-hanging fruit
would be web integration, presence, geo-positioning, IM - the platform
for these exists, all that is needed is to turn that into real
user-available features - for each application or group of applications,
do the specification work (eg. Rhythmbox with an "Upcoming concerts from
this artist (and similar artists) in your area" - information all
available from Last.fm and geoclue - would rock). We're not going to get
all this done in one cycle, but it creates a goal, something to aim for
& push people towards

6-month cycle: As you were. Keeps platform & apps stable and evolving.

For the moment, we've decided to move to the cycle. Now we need to have
a process which arrives at a finality - realistic user-targetted goals
which will benefit users, and not have us drowning in a massive rewrite.

That process is the big challenge.

Like I said, there are a number of low-hanging fruit out there with
Soylent/Telepathy, Geoclue, EDS (and hey, if the libs are hard to use,
we can give feedback & get them fixed), the Online Desktop stuff which
looked really interesting... we just need to turn these from
technical-facing "stuff" to user-facing Actions and Projects. We're
currently buried under our stuff, and we need more projects!

Whatever process we (you?) choose, it must have a finality. I'm
extremely happy to see the release team stepping up & taking ownership
of the future of GNOME. In my ideal world, you guys would now open a
consulting period for ideas & brainstorming, and at the Boston Summit
(or before), announce what the theme for GNOME 3.0 will be, with a long
list of features to be co-ordinated across the desktop.

So, Luis, I think you were being a little harsh - GNOME's been lethargic
for so long, you're expecting to see us sprinting, when we're still at
the stage of learning to walk again.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
bolsh gnome org