Hi Jim, Actually at Igalia we share your view and concerns, and this is one of the reasons why we are putting a lot of effort into bringing modern and solid web technologies to the heart of GNOME, being WebKitGTK+ one of the key components that can enable the integration that you mention. Br, Juan
On Fri, Mar 05, 2010 at 07:51:27AM -0500, Jim Gettys wrote: > The point I was trying to make was that HTML 5 (or more formally some > of the API's for javascript for accessing local storage), among other > things, enables offline use of web applications. Think google gears > use in google calendar and gmail or google air. Note gears was just > formally abandoned by Google in favor of standards (a good thing, IMHO). > > It is becoming feasible to build applications with those technologies > that you *can* take with you. In this sense, they become no different > than software we currently install in conventional ways based on GTK+; > just more convenient. This is part of the inflection point I believe is > about to arrive. > > I've seen little discussion on how gnome should be thinking of becoming > part of an much larger ecosystem of applications that I believe will > form due to this capability. > > And yes, the end state may be that desktop environments do become > entirely browser based; this may or may not be a "good thing" (either > technically, or on software freedom grounds), depending on how the > process plays out. > > And without thinking this possible trend through, the probability of > influencing this trend in "good" directions for the social good is > greatly diminished. > > Let me give you a concrete example common practice in javascript > programs is to "obfuscate" the code > 1) as a mechanism to "protect IP" (RMS, please don't jump on me here: > I'm parroting how the companies involved are thinking about it), - > 2) but also to improve compression of the loading of such programs > initially. People like Google work *hard* on latency and understand > every byte counts (among many other things: go look at the google talks > by their engineers on the topic). > > Right now, these are two disincentives for the source code to be > available at all. > > As a solution to 2), Gnome (and/or the FSF) could work in the web > community to standardize mechanisms and code for making such source > available. So long as solutions to 2) do not exist, we're in a much > poorer position; free and open source code should not work *worse* than > proprietary, IMHO. > > I'm concerned to have not seen this sort of strategic issue discussed > widely. _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list