Re: Listening to user base

[Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl>]

On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 06:57:43PM +0200, Giovanni Campagna wrote:
> The release team has the technical lead, given that you decide what goes
> in and what stays out, at the feature and module level. By extension, I
> see that as being in charge of final decisions, in case they cannot be
> made by traditional means because of dissent.
> Is this wrong? If so, who is responsible?

It is the wrong question. Suggest to read our release-team pages:
http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning

Quoting:
| The GNOME Release Team helps to coordinate the GNOME release process,
| mainly by creating a 6-monthly release schedule, and keeping everyone
| informed about the various stages of that schedule. We work for the
| developer community, helping everyone to work together and make
| progress. We try not to get in the way.

GNOME is run as a meritocracy. Asking who is responsible goes against
how the release-team is setup. So read all of our wiki pages, they
describe best how things are done.

Regarding GNOME 3.x feedback: Usability studies and real surveys (so
proper sampling, any internet poll is out). I'm not really impressed
with anything else. Without that it'll just be guesswork if changes
should be made and if so, which changes.

Pretty sure if such data is shown to the various teams that it'll be
very welcome. But don't forget that we're just at 3.0; there are still
various things in the design that haven't been implemented yet.

Comparing a total new design with various still to be implemented ideas
against something which had 16 followup releases is going to result in a
lot of feedback. To avoid assumptions, real data is needed (with good
sampling, no internet stuff -- too much bias in the sample).
-- 
Regards,
Olav