Re: Working together

[Luca Ferretti <lferrett gnome org>]

Il giorno Sat, 14/05/2011 alle 14.48 +0200, Frederic Peters ha scritto:

> Still, different persons will have different opinions on the precise
> position of the slider;

Or, maybe, different persons simply ignore where currently is the slider
(and where we want to push it in next years). I'm one or them. Maybe I
missed some emails or planet posts or irc conversations, but until now I
was sure we were shifting from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 keeping our "mission".

I.e. to provide source code and let distributions and third parties play
their roles: build it up and develop new stuff using our API/specs.

You could blame me, but I was sure the 'GNOME OS' idea was more
"marketing" oriente, a different way to propose our final product, maybe
more integrated and design driven, but basically following the same
mission; I've learned in past days we aim to build a monolithic...
monolithic... what???  

What does this "OS" means, exactly? Are we, GNOME community, going to
make a true distro, choosing approved components from kernel to browser
and releasing them as binary files to end users? This is what I guess
reading wiki pages about "GNOME OS installer" or comments in recent
thread on desktop-devel. 

So, IMHO, the fist gap to resolve is to disambiguate and communicate
this missing piece, a big and essential piece, write it on wiki and
website. Or decide it, if yet pending, once and for all, 'cause "a new
computing experience" is a marketing message, not a project definition.

I can't align somehow to other release team members, if I ignore what
I'm releasing.

Personal note: to be honest I'm against a radical "Complete Control"
approach, 'cause it alters the nature itself of GNOME (at least the free
software project called GNOME I'm used to know and partecipate) and it
could be a failure for us and for third parties (see the result of
deja-dup proposal: Michael said "assimilation")

>  I believe distributions are still major
> players, bringing GNOME to the users, and they will want some places
> for differentiation, and that's another slider, how much distanciation
> from our designs do we give out explicitely (implicitely distributions
> can do whatever they want, this is free software).

Agree, this kind of clarification was also asked by Sergej on
desktop-devel. And I think it's in pair my previous one.

And another issue to clarify is the difference between core,
applications and featured applications; by now the only statement about
this is a comment inside a jhbuild moduleset. Third parties developers
could appreciate it.

> But overruling maintainers? In this specific case I don't think it
> would be needed, but still, if collectively we think we should provide
> this extensibility I am of the opinion we could overrule them, yes,
> this would be a rare event.

A provocative question: who are currently the "maintainers" of
gnome-control-center module? Code developers or designers? In the past
months I happened to propose some changes or ask rationale about some UI
elements to developers. Their replies was something like "don't ask me,
I simply implemented what designers told".

So it seems some maintainers was yet "overruled" by designers. 

This leads me to the following personal doubt: in this new vision of
GNOME, what's the current role of release team? Who are currently in
charge to choose what is GNOME (module/feature to accept) and what is
not GNOME (module/feature to reject)?

Anyhow, I'm for extensibility of gnome-control-center. I think it's a
value, not a menace.

> 
> Apart those big questions on directions, there is still another one,
> about modules in launchpad. I'd say I already have accounts on
> freedesktop, 0pointer.de, or launchpad, and that this is inconvenient,
> that I don't want to encourage modules to be scattered all around,
> that we need some policy for modules developed in other platforms
> (tarballs should still be pushed to ftp.gnome.org, a deal should be
> done with our translation teams) but I do not mind more for launchpad
> than the others, and in the case of deja-dup, given the possibility
> for externally developed settings panels, I am fine if it stays on
> launchpad.

Are you referring to featured apps or core dependencies? I remember we
were fine to have featured apps outside git.gnome.org (while it's a pain
from translation point of view, I think we can't force people to place
all related GNOME apps on git.gnome.org).

No strong opinion, instead, for dependencies. Generally speaking I'm for
a liberal, collaboration-based approach, and the policy you proposed is
really fine.


> This is for my brain dump on current issues, as written at the start
> I'd like to have the release team somehow aligned, and that's not
> necessarily on the opinions expressed here.

Just a final node: I feel we need more transparency. I'm not saying
GNOME people changed to a faction, but some relevant info about policies
and purposes are still fluctuating on IRC, whereas a more visible place
could be more effective.
I prefer collaboration with third parties and external developers, I
dislike the idea of WE (the enlightened GNOMErs) versus THEY (the bad
people who stole our work to build up their own interest), I feel
bothersome staying here and jealousy guarding our boundaries against the
enemies. Open source means to give.


PS I'm not sure I can attend tomorrow meeting. Please consider this as
my personal position if those issues will arise.