Re: Issuing a press release about GNOME 3

[Olav Vitters <olav bkor dhs org>]

Note that initially this was discussed at UDS. I am not sure where I
speak for the whole release team (GUADEC) or just a few. You might get a
few corrections.

On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 06:55:53PM +0200, Dave Neary wrote:
> 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!)

We were thinking of 2.5 years. This would make x.10 equal to x+1.0. Yes,
stupid reasoning, but it was easy to agree upon.

> 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

That is the idea yes, basically starting from GNOME 3.0 onwards (setting
a goal for 4.0). For 3.0, it is more a put the finishing touches on 2.x.
E.g. the work done to remove bonobo, have gio/gvfs everywhere, etc. It
could use some other small goal as well, but due to the intensive
changes needed to port everything I think the goal should be small -- it
is hard enough.
As from 3.0, then there should be a goal setting at GUADEC (the 2.5 year
bites us a bit.. wouldn't match.. but IMO 2 years a bit short).


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

Yeah, only loads more apps.

> 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.

The idea was to do that at GUADEC (we sort of expected such a discussion
to happen after the proposal).

> 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

Make sure to give out the right impression though: Release team doesn't
dictate, just gathers ideas and guides the process. (first bit on
http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning).

> 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.

Perhaps yes. I still like GUADEC though -- way more people.

-- 
Regards,
Olav