Re: 3.18 topics: application revival

[alex diavatis <alexis diavatis gmail com>]

Hello Andre,

I didn't say move to Github, I said that the current system doesn't work, it never worked good enough (the past 10 years)

and this is something that "~many" recognize in "private" talks. GNOME isn't ChromeOS with 500 full time developers, 

that they don't care for external contributors (but they do get HUGE feedback). Thus for GNOME is more important to make everyone's life easier.

Plus I consider wrong to depend only to Red Hat full time contributors, and I hope Endless does good and help on this. 

And "software" is a popularity content, both as development and as usage. One brings another. Either you care to push

open source, or GNOME itself. And the first is not relevant anymore. Open Source does fine today, with GNOME or without. 

So I believe GNOME should focus more about being competitive simply as a "desktop" and not as 

an "open source desktop".

About stats and numbers, you can point me how much GNOME has grown the past 5 years, and if those numbers 

are satisfactory. Speaking for applications which is the original subject, I can only point you to application

development for Ubuntu touch, from contributors and not Canonical engineers. 

I see that you have a very good product here with good developers, that you don't "promote" and "help" it 

to advanced they way it could and should. For example the whole idea of "we want casuals users" is limited

to design, when the really important parts are ignored.

Anyway I probably see different things, so I won't open such a discussion again :) 

Ps. And I don't rant here or whatever else. I just say what I believe. I still use GNOME after all!

-alex

On Sun, Apr 19, 2015 at 9:00 PM, Andre Klapper <ak-47 gmx net> wrote:

On Sat, 2015-04-18 at 03:03 +0300, alex diavatis wrote:
> > We already mirror on GitHub (but I have not checked how clearly we
> say
> > that it is just a mirror and if we point to

> Github mirror is good enough to watch the changes on a project,

Well, that feels subjective and vague to me, so I could reply by
"https://git.gnome.org/browse/someprojectname/log/ is good enough to
watch changes on a project"...? Not constructive, I know.
But see past discussions in the desktop-devel mailing list archives in
Aug/Sep 2013 and Aug 2012 (and potentially foundation mailing list).

> but since you can't report and follow bugs, isn't very helpful

We use GNOME Bugzilla for bugs. So far noone else has expressed interest
in using GitHub for issue tracking, as far as I know.
You can report and follow bugs on GNOME Bugzilla by creating an account.
Same (account creation) is required on GitHub, as far as I know.

> > https://wiki.gnome.org/Git/Developers ). If you refer to entirely
> moving
> > to GitHub: I dislike the idea of relying on closed source software.

> "Dislike" isn't quite a reason ;)

"Dislike" might not, but "closed source software" is quite a reason. ;)
Again, see past discussions pointed out above.

> > Could you elaborate? What kind of "communication"?

> Clearly GNOME gets most of the feedback from BGO.

And mailing lists and IRC. I think temporarily there were also forums,
but that's something that engagement could probably better answer.

>  Even if you call an "annoyance" on Google+,
> a common response will be, please file a bug. Bugzilla isn't designed
> to play that role. It's only for developers.

Errm, is it? How is GitHub not?

> Further more, what I'm telling is that projects on Github, with
> smaller user base than GNOME, get more
> feedback from more users.

You imply that we want to get more feedback. I would not agree. I'd
personally rather say I want to get more good & constructive feedback.
I don't believe that software development is a popularity contest.
>
> > Have more acceptance

> I mean that you need to identify the reasons why people prefer to
> contribute on new projects, or in projects
> like elementary. For example, comparing the sizes of elementary and
> GNOME, elementary attracts more
> contributors for their apps than GNOME.

Do you have any numbers / resources? Would like to take a look.

Cheers,
andre
--
Andre Klapper  |  ak-47 gmx net
http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/