Re: Meeting Minutes Published - March 29th, 2011
Hi! 1. Ryan is not representative of all companies out there offering services around the GTK+ stack and it is a conflict of interest to involve just him (what of Collabora, Openismus, Igalia, Lanedo and perhaps even others)? As I brought this up: * I didn't discuss this with Ryan IIRC, just with Shaun and Germán. * My intention was to give all these companies that support GNOME in some or the other way a chance to present them (or at least have their name in the list). As mentioned in my mail to the board, I personally don't care how the board handles the support term but it would be good to have some formal way of telling people what they need to do to appear on such a page. * I don't think the board/Ryan/Andreas want to priviliges someone/some company here but it seems that this action item tives a wrong impression. * I am not affiliated with any of those companies and even if I used to work for Openismus in the past, I didn't discuss this with anybody apart from the people at the hackfest mentioned above. For what it's worth I still thing this would be a win-win situation for everybody! Regards, Johannes ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Meeting Minutes Published - March 29th, 2011
On 15/04/11 14:45, Bastien Nocera wrote: On Fri, 2011-04-15 at 11:39 +0100, Martyn Russell wrote: We wanted to discuss with someone involved in that space what our options were.It's an informal chat about what could be done. Andreas took on the action item, and chose to talk with Ryan because he knows Ryan well. If I had taken on the action item, I'd probably have asked Robert McQueen or Murray Cumming because I know them well, and have had plenty of interaction with them. This does really just illustrate what I am trying to point out. Doesn't it make more sense to have a mailing list for all companies involved in GNOME to discuss things like this instead of asking specific people from specific companies? You would get much more feedback and a more general consensus. We wanted opinion on how we could have the Foundaton provide what some third-party developers were asking for. Andreas chose to talk to Ryan about it. It's informal, and an information gathering exercise. Ryan won't be the one making decisions in the end, the Board will be. Sure. But the board then makes a decision based on one person's view, not the collective view of businesses around GNOME which could be offering such services. snip We told Stormy last year at GUADEC that we really need a forum or way for potential customers to contact businesses around GNOME and get support for the GNOME stack. We have seen first hand how companies have offered services when they don't have the expertise and subsequently frightened off larger corporations as a result. We want to avoid this too. That would be a problem here, especially if the list was filled in by the companies themselves. You need *some* dialog with companies otherwise you don't know what's on offer as a foundation acting on behalf of GNOME for small business. Please can we have some open forum about this instead of expecting one person in the community who isn't representative of all companies with maintainers in those areas, being contacted? He's not representing anyone, and he won't be a decision maker in the process. The representatives would be contacted once we have a more accomplished idea about this. What's to decide? The representatives which Ryan informs you about? Idea about offering services? Surely asking many people yields better results than asking just one person? But, at the end of the day, you can also help yourself by providing us with your feedback, or better, stepping up to the plate and do the work to fill those needs and help us help you. Gladly, just let me know what you want feedback on. What work is needed? I was actually planning on doing something with Stormy during the past year, but never got around to it (that's my fault of course). Ranting and raving about how we want to have an informal chat with someone about a topic you might be interested is counter-productive. Where did I rant? I actually suggested a more open forum to help you get that informal chat from more sources to help you make a more informed decision. Returning to the topic at hand. Do any of the companies you mentioned provide developer support for GTK+? I've had the experience of providing developer support for Red Hat (that did include fixing Motif bugs...), Yes. We certainly do of course. I am confident Collabora and Igalia do or have, perhaps even Openismus. In the end, unless you ask *us* how can you know? I am guessing based on rumour and upstream contributions. You can't know for sure without approaching companies. and most of the questions were about: - migration from one platform to another Do you have more context here, or an example even? - best practices when needing to change the implementation We can provide that (if you mean specific code bases like GTK+). Kris Rietveld (from Lanedo) even did a talk about it last year at GUADEC which might be available somewhere. He spoke about vendor specific branches and working with upstream repositories. - (possible) bugs found in underlying libraries that (might) need fixing, usually caused by bad or lacking documentation, or actual bugs. What's the question here? All of this is quite a different proposition from providing a turn-key finished application, especially with the depth of the stack we provide. Not sure what you're saying here? I'm waiting to hear about your ideas on this. The above is, at best, hard to interpret. If you have a formal list of things to ask, please make it public here and I can reply certainly. Pleasant weekend all, -- Regards, Martyn ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Meeting Minutes Published - March 29th, 2011
On Fri, 2011-04-15 at 17:42 +0100, Martyn Russell wrote: On 15/04/11 14:45, Bastien Nocera wrote: On Fri, 2011-04-15 at 11:39 +0100, Martyn Russell wrote: We wanted to discuss with someone involved in that space what our options were.It's an informal chat about what could be done. Andreas took on the action item, and chose to talk with Ryan because he knows Ryan well. If I had taken on the action item, I'd probably have asked Robert McQueen or Murray Cumming because I know them well, and have had plenty of interaction with them. This does really just illustrate what I am trying to point out. Doesn't it make more sense to have a mailing list for all companies involved in GNOME to discuss things like this instead of asking specific people from specific companies? You would get much more feedback and a more general consensus. That's backwards. We're in early discussion about what we should do to engage the companies. So, yes, having a mailing-list for all those interested companies would certainly be helpful. Having a directory of companies on the developer.gnome.org website was also mentioned. This is the sort of ideas that we're looking to get some information about, eg. what means of communication would be best to engage the companies in the first place. snip He's not representing anyone, and he won't be a decision maker in the process. The representatives would be contacted once we have a more accomplished idea about this. What's to decide? How we want to engage the companies to start discussing the problems we mentioned. The representatives which Ryan informs you about? Idea about offering services? Surely asking many people yields better results than asking just one person? But, at the end of the day, you can also help yourself by providing us with your feedback, or better, stepping up to the plate and do the work to fill those needs and help us help you. Gladly, just let me know what you want feedback on. What work is needed? I was actually planning on doing something with Stormy during the past year, but never got around to it (that's my fault of course). Ranting and raving about how we want to have an informal chat with someone about a topic you might be interested is counter-productive. Where did I rant? I actually suggested a more open forum to help you get that informal chat from more sources to help you make a more informed decision. Returning to the topic at hand. Do any of the companies you mentioned provide developer support for GTK+? I've had the experience of providing developer support for Red Hat (that did include fixing Motif bugs...), Yes. We certainly do of course. I am confident Collabora and Igalia do or have, perhaps even Openismus. In the end, unless you ask *us* how can you know? I am guessing based on rumour and upstream contributions. You can't know for sure without approaching companies. and most of the questions were about: - migration from one platform to another Do you have more context here, or an example even? In my case, mostly migrating from Solaris to Linux APIs. In the case of GTK+ apps, I'd expect, migrating my app from Windows to Linux. - best practices when needing to change the implementation We can provide that (if you mean specific code bases like GTK+). Kris Rietveld (from Lanedo) even did a talk about it last year at GUADEC which might be available somewhere. He spoke about vendor specific branches and working with upstream repositories. No. Not GTK+'s implementation. The customer's application's implementation. - (possible) bugs found in underlying libraries that (might) need fixing, usually caused by bad or lacking documentation, or actual bugs. What's the question here? I think there's quite a bit of confusion there about what developer support is, so I'll rephrase it. It's gtk-app-devel-list or StackExchange with somebody on the other end that's being paid to answer you, and that can be sued if they don't deliver. Via e-mail. Or phone. Or through a web interface. All of this is quite a different proposition from providing a turn-key finished application, especially with the depth of the stack we provide. Not sure what you're saying here? I'm waiting to hear about your ideas on this. The above is, at best, hard to interpret. If you have a formal list of things to ask, please make it public here and I can reply certainly. Do you, or any other companies in the GNOME eco-system provide developer support as defined above? If not, then Andreas doesn't need to speak to Ryan, and the problem is solved. We wouldn't have a good case to edge companies that write their software in-house towards GTK+. Cheers ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list