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Gnome project in need of a vision ?
By a member of the hurd, Section GNU-Friends
Posted on Wed Aug 14th, 2002 at 05:08:25 GMT
While i was browsing aimlessly in Michael Meeks's worklog on http://www.gnome.org/~michael, i was surprised to find on the last slide of the boston 2002 presentation(entry 2002-7-19) this sentence :

Gnu Network Object Model Environment is dead.

This very slide also display as title : We need a vision.

I didn't know that the gnome project had lost the vision that he was working on producing a desktop for the gnu system (see rms mail for the gnome board candidacy). What are the gnu-friends thinking of about this, how could that have happened ?.

 

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Gnome project in need of a vision ? | 12 comments (12 topical, editorial) | Post A Comment
[new] easy (#1)
by a member of the hurd (#-1) on Wed Aug 14th, 2002 at 13:41:21 GMT

There's simply too much duplicate/unnecessary effort going on. If all lower level things would be made part of GNU instead of Gnome, it would be easier for other projects to use it as well, reducing duplicate effort.

Another optimization would be to merge organisational things (e.g. Gnome has its own l10n project, GNU has its own l10n project (which handles more than only GNU software)), further reducing unnecessary effort.

It's necessary to have a clear focus on what you want to accomplish, and to have clear information for potential contributors (a lot of suggestions don't arrive because there's no such thing as "feature requests" which can be found on SourceForge).

A clear organisation like putting all parts of it in a Savannah/SourceForge like system can also make a real difference. (It makes it easier to find the place to suggest things, to keep up-to-date with developments, to contribute.)

Just my $0.02, I really like both Gnome and GNU, and am happy using their software. Keep up the good work!

[ Reply to This ]


 
[new] Gnome not GNU....? (#2)
by a member of the hurd (#-1) on Wed Aug 14th, 2002 at 14:57:56 GMT

GNOME is supposed to be part of GNU, but it seems that it has drifted. Do Gnomers consider it part of GNU? I would suspect not, although Gnuers probably still consider GNOME part of GNU.

GNOME is getting pretty big now, and in a way it has outgrown GNU, and the (seeming) lack of communication between the projects - plus the fact that GNU also has GNUStep, etc. - means that GNOME has kind of been ostracised.

GNU may be many things, but inclusivity doesn't appear to be one of them :(

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[new] Technical vision,, not political vision (#4)
by a member of the hurd (#-1) on Wed Aug 14th, 2002 at 20:52:09 GMT

I don't think MMeek's comments refer to the vision of GNOME being a GNU desktop. I think he refers to technical vision, like how the system architecture should be like (use of Corba, Bonobo-based or not), using C or C# or C++ for the base libraries, etc.

[ Reply to This ]


[new] Freedom, Quality, Language (#7)
by lupo (#48) () on Thu Aug 15th, 2002 at 12:05:25 GMT
(User Info) http://sledge.bnv-bamberg.de

Since its inception, GNOME had a "negative" definition: Being free, contrary to KDE. It has made Trolltech reconsider their licensing policy. Since then, it has lost its big benefit.

The idea of language independence, which was seemingly always valued over stringent design (see the different quality of the different GNOME APIs - i.e. Bonobo sucks when compared to DCOP/ Kparts/ etc.), has no point, because most people use C or C++ for desktop apps anyway. And even if someone wants to use other languages, you can write bindings without much hassles (see Python bindings for KDE). So the second benefit of GNOME is IMHO a non-benefit.

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[new] Why dont you mail Michael and Ask? (#12)
by a member of the hurd (#-1) on Fri Sep 27th, 2002 at 21:45:11 GMT

Rather than taking a slide from a presentation that you were not at and looking at it totally without the relevant context why dont you send a mail to Michael Meeks and ask him what he meant?

Who knows, he might have just been trying to shock his audience. He might just meant that Gnome has acheived many of its goals and needs new ideas.

Just ask him, or at least ask someone who attended the conference (like me) and saw the talk (except i did not see Michaels talk).

[ Reply to This ]


 
Gnome project in need of a vision ? | 12 comments (12 topical, editorial) | Post A Comment
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