Re: [draft] Planning for GNOME 3.0

[Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org>]

Thanks for your comments!
Quick replies:

Le lundi 30 mars 2009, à 13:19 -0400, Luis Villa a écrit :
> Overall:
> This is a much, much stronger document than I expected, and can form
> the basis for legitimate forward progress. A very good start.
> 
> Big comments:
> 
> I like the focus on shell and journal; I tend to think that this is
> not *enough* to keep us relevant, but they are a good conceptual start
> and should kick us out of our rut.

Nod. I added this (which also takes into account a comment from
Matthias):

These two ideas can form the basis of an overhauled GNOME user
experience; they are not the only changes that we can and will do, but
they definitely are the most advanced projects to help us move forward
in terms of user experience. The GNOME Shell and the GNOME Zeitgeist
projects are indeed already well underway, with working code and strong
development going on since nearly six months. This means the effort is
not about starting those projects, but about first completing them so
that people can work daily with them, and then polishing them.

> The answer to 'what if people still want panel' is 'there *will* be an
> 'enterprise gnome' (aka 2.x) indefinitely' because the almost-certain
> reality is that the enterprise providers will be be forced to continue
> to provide panel, etc. May be better to acknowledge this up front.

Good point. I added:

However, it's worth noting that distributors using GNOME to build
enterprise products will most certainly help maintain the GNOME 2.x
shell for quite some time.

> It is slightly disappointing to see no talk of 'bringing platform into
> 21st century'; i.e., easy web access by devs, deep IM/people
> integration, or jscript. (yay for jscript mostly killing the java/c#
> discussion! ;)

Re deep IM/people integration: this is something I wanted quite hard,
but I've not seen any huge progress in this area for quite some time
(even if telepathy is nicely evolving). But I'm adding it to the
list of potential areas:

 - People: the telepathy framework has nicely progressed over the last
 few years and it's offering great perspectives to integrate instant
 messaging, and more generally, interaction with people in other
 applications. With some focus, it could contribute to make GNOME a
 social desktop where you do not only work on documents, but where you
 also really interact with your friends.

Re javascript (and introspection comment from Matthias), I added:

The work that has been done on GObject introspection will also deeply
change the way GNOME development can be done; we've already started to
see how it can be leveraged in GNOME Shell, and the fact that it can
bring new popular languages like Javascript to GNOME is a huge benefit.

> Almost certainly necessary to say something better than "the mobile
> team could do something if they want"; maybe the board's mobile group
> could be contacted about this? I presume gtk 3.0 would have lots of
> appealing features for them.

Yeah, I missed the fact that I kept this part as notes. I felt it has to
be mentioned, but didn't know what exactly to put.

> Our six-month cycle works because we are making small, incremental
> changes; while I admire the boldness of thinking such massive changes
> are possible in a six month cycle, I also think you're crazy. Accept
> right now that (unless there is massive investment in testing, and
> probably even not then) this will absolutely not happen on calendar.

Nod, I understand this and we're probably optimistic because we didn't
experience too many bad things in the past (you know how young people
are ;-)). That being said, I think having an aggressive schedule is the
right thing to do. It's also why it's clearly mentioned that things
might not be ready in time and that we should be ready to accept it.

(now, if most people think this proposed schedule is too crazy, we can
certainly change this)

> smaller comments:

Tried to fix all this.

Vincent

-- 
Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.