On Mon, 5 Nov 2007 21:54:45 +0800, Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote :
> First. > > I need to offer some big apologies. I have been pretty bad at being > responsive and attentive to E for a while now. I can give you a > million reasons (excuses) > - but that not fair. I've basically been "paying the rent" with Jobs > - and they have not had anything to do with E (first) and then > nothing to do with Open source OR E. This means E swindled into a > small corner of my world. I've been bad to respond to mail or provide > any form of direction ,feedback - or for that matter - leadership. > Please accept my sincerest apologies. It's my fault and my problem. I > need to fix this. > > And fix it I shall. That is my intent. So launching into fixing, I > shall do below. So bear with me. I've been for an email like this one for a few months now! Thanks! :) > > First on to some news. It may has snuck out before and it's now > official. I'm @ OpenMoko ( http://www.openmoko.org ) now. Why? Back > to OpenSource roots - and for that matter, back to Linux, X11 and > Graphics... and.... E! For those who don't know what OpenMoko is - > read the link. It's exciting. That is really great news to hear! I'm really glad for you, and I'm pretty sure you could bring a lot of good to the OpenMoko project! Congratulations! :) > > This mans I now will have more time. Right now I will be all over the > place - I am shifting countries again, so I'll be sporadic with > E-mail and reachability, but that will settle. I'm moving (partly) > back to Sydney, Australia, and the other half of my time i will be in > Taipei or other locations. But I do intend to have more focus and > support on E. > > Now why? OpenMoko is convinced the technology behind E is what it > takes to make exciting mobile phones that are Linux based and > OpenSource.This amounts to what is commercial support for E. This > makes me excited. This opens doors for us. In addition to the work > Nokia's INDT are doing, Terrasoft, and now gOS with Everex - this is > a growing list of companies putting their faith in us. Some of you > may be suspicious of this - please do not be. In E land we have > believed in freedom - not a limited brand of it, but one that ALSO > gives freedom to those producing commercial products to do whatever > it is they need or want to do. I believe that in the end, they will > come back to the fold and not close and hide their source, because > the cost of maintaining a fork is just too high. I belive with > support will come resources, and resources will mean development of > the things you need and want. Everyone wins. Great to see that more and more commercial products are using the EFL! :) > > One thing people may notice is that E is getting some splits. Desktop > vs. "Embedded". Apps vs libraries and multiple libraries and > projects. I don't think E will ever really totally split - it will > just have lots of useful libraries, tools and apps - different ones > aiming for different directions. One thing I hope to do is keep E > together - even if there are different directions. It would be great in theory to be able to share the same code for the Desktop and the Embedded versions of E, but I'm not sure it is such a good idea after all. If it implies having lot of modules and lot of use cases in order to get a different behaviour according to the platform, I'm not sure it will benefit to the developer (more complex code), not to the user (more complex interface). I'm actually not sure a traditionnal WM like e17 will fit well on embedded devices like cellphones. It might be good on Internet tables, but I'm more dubious for small-screen devices. > > I also see the team growing - this is great, but it serves to just > increase communication traffic, and that in turn means less coding > gets done. The traditional solution here is to start some hierarchy > and "reporting lines". I don't want to do this though - this will > server to create splits where once there was fluid freedom. If we > must - we must. Any suggestions? I'm thinking of maybe just > formalising a bit more of our developer "Relations", involvement and > teamwork. Some Ideas for people-things: > > 1. Identify people who WANT to be leaders and shape the direction of > E - and are willing to spent the effort. Some of you do it as a hobby > and love just that, some do it for a job, others are in half-way > houses. 2. Lets have actual weekly or monthly developer meetings - > literally all-in live discussions - maybe IRC? Have actual agendas in > meetings. Minutes. 3. Have regular community meetings where people > can tell us what they like and don't - give feedback or whatever. > 4. Try an organise some annual get-together. An "E meet" (I think > I'll just call it "The Rave" for now - it fits with the whole E > thing). So Literally find a place on the planet we all can/want to go > to - go there. Having more meetings (virtual or in real life) is a really great idea. I really think one of the main issue in the E community is the current lack of communication. We do not communicate about anything. People just don't know what is going on. Having weekly meetings with a short summary/report would really help imho! I'm really excited about this idea! :) > > Now we also need to fix up enlightenment.org a bit - I intend to sink > a bit of time into solidifying some content. The Wiki has a fair bit. > Anyone is welcome to contribute as they see fit. Imo, e.org is a bit messy. Dan has done a great job to get it simpler, but the section "About" (which is the most important one) is not well structured imo. > > But the primary thing of importance is getting E17 out the door. It's > actually looking petty good. Only 2 really big TODO items left. I'm > doing a theme revamp. The Default theme has very much aged. The gold > bling isn't incredibly popular. I'm working on something I think > people will love - and it still shows off E. It will replace the > current default - and will also knock off some of the "comment the > default theme so its better documented for people to build new themes > from and learn Edje. > > Once E17 is out I intend to work hard on taking E mobile. That mans > giving it the ability to run beautifully on tiny 1-4" screens or so, > from 320x240 up to 800x480 or beyond but work like a charm with > touchcreens, stylus's or fingers, with or without a keyboard or other > buttons. But above all - it has to be sexy. This will simply be > extending E - adding hooks, modules or module replacements. This will > not mean E for the desktop is abandoned by me - it means it is simply > a parallel focus - I use it every day of my life on every machine I > have. Now I want it in the palm of my hand too. > > I hope that everyone can be just as excited. I know I am. I smell a > new age of... Enlightenment. :) I'm really excited about this too! Especially about the new communication plan! I actually even think we should do more on the communication point. It would be great to establish a roadmap for example, with a list of items to get done in priority, for the different release-candidates, with eventually some mock-ups. It would also be good to have a place where designers or users could share easily some UI ideas. And not only for Enlightenment itself, but for all the libs/apps around E. A good thing to do too would be to *really* define the scope of the project. Are we just doing a WM, or are we aiming at something bigger? If this is something bigger, what should be the caracteristics of an E-app? Should it just use EFL? Should it be sexy? These questions would have to be answered if we want to get somewhere imo. Simon TRENY <MoOM> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ enlightenment-devel mailing list enlightenment-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/enlightenment-devel
