Re: Certification for GNOME apps
Hi ~ I'm actually feeling the opposite of Andrew here, but funny enough... for almost the same reasons. I like the idea of having certification levels for GNOME apps in terms of library usage, but not in terms of user experience. By using similar libraries you are automatically dragged into a somewhat similar user experience. Our libraries are designed for a certain kind of experience, and this means they are not necessarily suitable for other user experiences. If GNOME had the all singing all dancing libraries that allowed you to do anything, we'd never get any of it done and you'd be able to build whatever experience you wanted off of that. Really the user experience shouldn't be tied down to any certification. Otherwise someone would have to spit out the ideal user experience for a computer desktop and then we all would work towards that. But in reality the user experience is changing just as rapidly as the libraries are. An example of where certifying the user experience would scare me is web browser bookmarks. I've been researching some ideas [1] to almost completely remove bookmarks (as they are now) from the user experience of GNOME web browsing. If the "web browsing experience" were standardized, then there would be a long road ahead of either standardizing this new experience or getting a low certification level because of changing the status quo. Obviously in this example the libraries for bookmarks might change too, and thus a library certification would run into the same problem as experience certification. So read on for my last point. Sadly, in my experience ISVs don't particularly care about the "user experience" anyway, so if we termed this certification in that language they'd probably just be turned off by it. Maybe that's not always the case, but usually they just want to know what libraries to use and what versions are most supported, etc. Since as I wrote before, our user experience is heavily influencing our libraries, any ISV that targets our libraries will most likely get close to our experience. [2] I'd suggest certifying the library usage of GNOME for ISVs and explaining along with this how other highly certified apps provide the expected user experience with these libraries. Thoughts? ~ Bryan [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/epiphany-list/2005-June/msg00061.html [2] http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1787803,00.asp - the original had a screenshot of the old GTK+ file chooser with the quote "The feature that has me most excited in Version 7.0, which was released this month, is its finally sane file open dialog." On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 20:54 +0100, Andrew Sobala wrote: > On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 20:42 +0100, Alan Cox wrote: > > On Mer, 2005-07-13 at 16:27, Federico Mena Quintero wrote: > > > Level 2 - the app is actually written with GTK+. > > > > Why does this matter ? Surely it is about degrees of integration and HIG > > compliance. > > I agree. I was similarly surprised by (on the wiki) the requirement to > use .glade files as a possibility for one level; surely this > certification should be about the user experience, not coding practises. > > This leads to a few modifications to the ideas suggested on the wiki; > for example, "Uses gnome-vfs" would be "Is able to open and save files > to/from any http:, ftp:, smb:, nfs: (others?) url." Which amounts to a > similar thing, but is based on how much a user would care. > > Basing the certification on library usage could lead to a situation > where the certification only matters to someone thinking of hacking on > the project! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
Alan Cox wrote: On Mer, 2005-07-13 at 16:27, Federico Mena Quintero wrote: I don't have names for the certification levels yet. They are something like this: Level 0 - the app runs without doing idiotic things like taking over your desktop. It appears in the panel menus, and it installs its MIME handlers. Pretty much any X app can be made to conform to this. Should include basic accessibility at this level. If its not accessible its software that is excluding parts of the user base and potentially foundation members and thats just -wrong- for certification. There are three fairly seperable things to do for accessibility. It may make sense to split these out over one or two of these certification levels as well. The accessibility bits are: a. keyboard accessibility - *everything* can be done only from the keyboard; no product feature requires a mouse b. full theme support - all of the GUI supports our themes, and specifically the accessibility themes: things get large, things get high contrast, focus indication is clear, etc. c. full support for ATK, and full interoperability with our assistive technologies GOK, Gnopernicus, and Dasher We might make some reference to Section 508 and other accessibility standards, but we should be very careful in doing so - we don't ever want to imply that any particular GNOME certification level means "complies with Section 508" or anything other such standard - there are a great many specific tests that apply to those standards, and I suggest we don't wade into that with this effort. Regards, Peter Korn Sun Accessibility team ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
> Then I don't see how Alan's point can be applied. Someone with a > Bomb... game should be free to label "GNOME certified" if it > happens to satisfy the technical aspects. And it should be clear > that it's a self-certificate. Maybe it should not be called a > certificate after all. "GNOME Friendly" may be a better term. Providing it doesn't in any way imply a connectio then yes I agree. Its about naming. Novell used to have a "works with netware" thing along those lines in fact. Alan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
On Thu, 14 Jul 2005, Jonathan Blandford wrote: > Behdad Esfahbod <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > On Thu, 14 Jul 2005, Alan Cox wrote: > > > > > On Mer, 2005-07-13 at 21:04, Jonathan Blandford wrote: > > > > The first two seem like no-brainers, but what are you thinking of > > > > 'harming the name of GNOME'? Is a clause requiring acceptable levels of > > > > privacy sufficient? Do you have other, concrete concerns here? > > > > > > I guess the extreme example might be "What do you do if someone comes to > > > you with a HIG compliant, gtk+ using, accessible, i18n translated 'Bomb > > > the New York Subway' game" [hello MI5] > > > > > > There are things you want a reason never to be associated with. > > > > Or one day we may want to refuse certification from companies > > that support the other operating system :D. > > > > Is the foundation going to certify apps or are companies allowed > > to evaluate and certify their own apps? If the former, should > > there be any fee for getting GNOME certified? > > To make it more clear, the intention is to make this a > self-certification system. We (GNOME) don't really want to get into the > business of certifying at the moment, and we should make it clear that > the products are certified aren't inherently endorsed by GNOME at all. Then I don't see how Alan's point can be applied. Someone with a Bomb... game should be free to label "GNOME certified" if it happens to satisfy the technical aspects. And it should be clear that it's a self-certificate. Maybe it should not be called a certificate after all. "GNOME Friendly" may be a better term. > Thanks, > -Jonathan --behdad http://behdad.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
* Evince is free software. I personally don't feel that the existence of non-free software keeps free software from developing. You know this situation better than I do. However, retarding development of free software is not the only potential problem to be avoided. If we spend effort to make non-free software better (better technically; it can't get ethically better except by being free), and that encourages people to stick with it rather than switch to free software, we've scored an own-goal. * Poppler isn't able to render every single PDF out there (though we are getting better!) Having Acroread as a fallback means that users of Free systems will be able to get work done. Some may do that--but we should not suggest or encourage it. To do so would undercut the message that non-free software is an ethical problem. * The Evince team is writing a totally different application than Acroread. Acroread is a giant, fully-featured pdf viewer that supports every obscure feature that the PDF spec covers. We aim to provide a reader that's optimized for reading documents, and covers the sensible bulk of PDFs. What solution will we recommend in the free world for other PDF files? We can't recommend using Acroread. Is Poppler meant to handle all PDF files? (I don't know the relationship between Poppler and Evince.) * I know that our efforts stand on their own, and that in time, users who know nothing of licensing will pick Evince over Acroread. I hope so too, but we need not leave it to this alone. Let's teach users to value freedom, whenever we get the chance; then they will choose Evince over Acroread partly for the freedom, well before it developes enough technical advantages to win them that way. Meanwhile, I was told recently that there seem to be undocumented features in recent PDF files. Figuring them all out may be difficult. We shouldn't put all our hope onto outdoing Acroread technically. * For all we know, Acroread might be Free software someday. I'd love if it was a great product that they opened up instead of a poor one. It isn't impossible, but it is a very long shot--I don't think we should bet on it in our plans. Adobe is the company that had Dmitry Sklyarov put in prison, and they never apologized for this, or said they would not do the same thing again. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
Ciaran wrote: "Is free software" should be a requirement, not "a level". I think that's true in some cases, but not all. Being free software should be a requirement for GNOME to talk about the app, or for the app to use a symbol that could be taken for a GNOME seal of approval. Daniel Veillard wrote: We want ISV to code against Gnome/GTK+, this is a Foundation position, reflected by the licences of our platform libraries. That is true too. The reason Miguel and I decided in 1997 to use the LGPL for the basic GNOME libraries is that it's advantageous to have proprietary apps encourage the use of GNOME. This factor is less important today than it was then. In 1997, if apps used Qt, that was a disaster, since it was non-free. Today that isn't a disaster, but we still appreciate boosting GNOME's popularity, all else being equal. But that effect should go in one direction only: proprietary apps should encourage use of GNOME, but GNOME should not encourage use of proprietary apps. So how do the proposed plans fit into these issues? - A sort-of checklist to let ISVs know what they should do in their apps to integrate well with the desktop --- to make their apps more GNOME-like. If this checklist exists, it will be usable for both free and non-free apps. That is no problem; if developers of proprietary apps follow this checklist, that is all to the good. - A way for GNOME to say, "app Foo integrates better with GNOME than app Bar". This is the place we need to be careful. It is useful to say this when the programs are free software. It can also be useful in special cases where Foo is free while Bar is proprietary and well-known. What we should avoid doing is to praise a non-free program, or to announce the existence of an obscure non-free program. - A way for users to know which app is more GNOME-like; hopefully this will give them a way to pick the better product. If this means another checklist, something that helps users judge for themselves how well an app works with GNOME, that is a useful thing to do. However, there is a tendency for people to think that "better program" means "better in a narrowly practical sense only." We should make sure not to appear to endorse that view. Once sentence at the end, to explain that "better" includes ethically better as well as technically better, and that free programs are always ethically better than proprietary programs, would do the job. Certification for GNOME apps Certifying non-free apps can be a useful thing to do, as long as the certification can't be misunderstood as a general kind of endorsement. For instance, if the app is permitted to say "This program interoperates with the GNOME desktop", that makes it clear what is being said, and what is not being said. However, allowing that program to simply use the GNOME logo would allow it to give the impression that GNOME endorses the program, and that would cause trouble. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
Hi, Selon Jonathan Blandford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Alan Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > - Software which is license violating > > - Software which otherwise harms the name of GNOME > > - "Software the foundation management believes would harm the reputation > > of GNOME" > > - Software where a referendum of members is called, counts achieved and > > the referendum is passed against certification [ie a last resort] > > what are you thinking of > 'harming the name of GNOME'? Is a clause requiring acceptable levels of > privacy sufficient? Do you have other, concrete concerns here? The GNOME certification process would be a stamp of approval handed out by us. As such, we would have to be careful that we don't hand out a GNOME stamp of approval to people we don't approve of. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary Lyon, France ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 16:04 -0400, Jonathan Blandford wrote: > The HIG doesn't define widget behavior very well. And nor is it supposed to... it's about informing the UI design decisions that developers have to make, not describing stuff that the toolkit should be doing for them. To that end, the HIG assumes that gtk+ will be used (although admittedly it doesn't actually say that anywhere), and if there's something we want to recommend in the HIG that isn't easy to do, that's where we file our bugs. Cheeri, Calum. -- CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer Sun Microsystems Ireland mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Java Desktop System Group http://ie.sun.com +353 1 819 9771 Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
On Thu, 2005-07-14 at 12:06 +0200, Danilo Šegan wrote: > Yesterday at 21:54, Andrew Sobala wrote: > > > On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 20:42 +0100, Alan Cox wrote: > >> On Mer, 2005-07-13 at 16:27, Federico Mena Quintero wrote: > >> > Level 2 - the app is actually written with GTK+. > >> > >> Why does this matter ? Surely it is about degrees of integration and HIG > >> compliance. > > > > I agree. I was similarly surprised by (on the wiki) the requirement to > > use .glade files as a possibility for one level; surely this > > certification should be about the user experience, not coding practises. > > It indirectly affects many things. Gtk+ and Glade using applications > have a better chance of having consistent user interface AND > translations. Maybe it would be Gnome-certified on a lower level, but > if it's not using stock menu items, and I have no power over managing > it's translation, I wouldn't certify it as "fully Gnome" since it > wouldn't fit on the desktop otherwise. > > Of course, there are counter examples such as Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0 > which use Gtk+, yet don't make use of any stock labels and icons if I > remember correctly. You still don't need to use glade, though. Sure, it makes life easier, but it may also involve rewriting your application - using stock menu items is a GTK feature people can add to their applications (if they're not doing it already) if they want to do it to become GNOME-certified; utilising translations is similar. If they have to do a hefty UI rewrite, they may just ignore the certification standards as being unachievable - at which point you don't get a cool app integrating with the GNOME desktop, but a set of certification standards that are being ignored. Just my feelings, I could be wrong. -- Andrew ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
Behdad Esfahbod <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Thu, 14 Jul 2005, Alan Cox wrote: > > > On Mer, 2005-07-13 at 21:04, Jonathan Blandford wrote: > > > The first two seem like no-brainers, but what are you thinking of > > > 'harming the name of GNOME'? Is a clause requiring acceptable levels of > > > privacy sufficient? Do you have other, concrete concerns here? > > > > I guess the extreme example might be "What do you do if someone comes to > > you with a HIG compliant, gtk+ using, accessible, i18n translated 'Bomb > > the New York Subway' game" [hello MI5] > > > > There are things you want a reason never to be associated with. > > Or one day we may want to refuse certification from companies > that support the other operating system :D. > > Is the foundation going to certify apps or are companies allowed > to evaluate and certify their own apps? If the former, should > there be any fee for getting GNOME certified? To make it more clear, the intention is to make this a self-certification system. We (GNOME) don't really want to get into the business of certifying at the moment, and we should make it clear that the products are certified aren't inherently endorsed by GNOME at all. Thanks, -Jonathan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
On Thu, 2005-07-14 at 12:31 -0400, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: > Or one day we may want to refuse certification from companies > that support the other operating system :D. I know you're probably being sarcastic. However, for that reason I think it's important to do a very good job of specifying what an application needs to be to become certified. I would for sure stop being a member of any GNOME organisation once the organisation would start picking companies who'd never get such a certification based only on "other" products they support or their history with the free software communities. If Microsoft would create a GNOME application, we as an organisation should be honest in investigating whether or not their application should be granted the certification label of a GNOME application by looking only at the application. Not at the company. I don't see how supporting a product, like for example Microsoft Office, would have per definition anything to do with the certification of such a application. I also don't see how, for example, supporting the KDE platform would make an entire company not eligible for getting a GNOME certification. I can make a lot such examples. The examples are not my point. If we start being like that, the organisation would end up being far worse than the companies some people hate. > Is the foundation going to certify apps or are companies allowed > to evaluate and certify their own apps? If the former, should > there be any fee for getting GNOME certified? I'd say the fee should be something like the amount of time the Foundation members need to investigate on the application multiplied by the current average cost of a consultant/contract worker. But I'm not a sales or marketing specialist :-) -- Philip Van Hoof, Software Developer @ Cronos home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org work: philip dot vanhoof at cronos dot be junk: philip dot vanhoof at gmail dot com http://www.pvanhoof.be/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
On Thu, 14 Jul 2005, Alan Cox wrote: > On Mer, 2005-07-13 at 21:04, Jonathan Blandford wrote: > > The first two seem like no-brainers, but what are you thinking of > > 'harming the name of GNOME'? Is a clause requiring acceptable levels of > > privacy sufficient? Do you have other, concrete concerns here? > > I guess the extreme example might be "What do you do if someone comes to > you with a HIG compliant, gtk+ using, accessible, i18n translated 'Bomb > the New York Subway' game" [hello MI5] > > There are things you want a reason never to be associated with. Or one day we may want to refuse certification from companies that support the other operating system :D. Is the foundation going to certify apps or are companies allowed to evaluate and certify their own apps? If the former, should there be any fee for getting GNOME certified? --behdad http://behdad.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
On Mer, 2005-07-13 at 21:04, Jonathan Blandford wrote: > The first two seem like no-brainers, but what are you thinking of > 'harming the name of GNOME'? Is a clause requiring acceptable levels of > privacy sufficient? Do you have other, concrete concerns here? I guess the extreme example might be "What do you do if someone comes to you with a HIG compliant, gtk+ using, accessible, i18n translated 'Bomb the New York Subway' game" [hello MI5] There are things you want a reason never to be associated with. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
Yesterday at 21:54, Andrew Sobala wrote: > On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 20:42 +0100, Alan Cox wrote: >> On Mer, 2005-07-13 at 16:27, Federico Mena Quintero wrote: >> > Level 2 - the app is actually written with GTK+. >> >> Why does this matter ? Surely it is about degrees of integration and HIG >> compliance. > > I agree. I was similarly surprised by (on the wiki) the requirement to > use .glade files as a possibility for one level; surely this > certification should be about the user experience, not coding practises. It indirectly affects many things. Gtk+ and Glade using applications have a better chance of having consistent user interface AND translations. Maybe it would be Gnome-certified on a lower level, but if it's not using stock menu items, and I have no power over managing it's translation, I wouldn't certify it as "fully Gnome" since it wouldn't fit on the desktop otherwise. Of course, there are counter examples such as Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0 which use Gtk+, yet don't make use of any stock labels and icons if I remember correctly. Therefore, using Gtk+ is surely a one level higher (think theming, a11y, i18n...) than not using it. Yeah, we can make that a general statement such as "does this and that", but in practice, it would mean "uses Gtk+". Why pretend? Lets at least make certification process simple, practical and efficient. > This leads to a few modifications to the ideas suggested on the wiki; > for example, "Uses gnome-vfs" would be "Is able to open and save files > to/from any http:, ftp:, smb:, nfs: (others?) url." Which amounts to a > similar thing, but is based on how much a user would care. sftp:, webdav:, whatever else is supported by gnome-vfs on anyone's system. Anyone can install more modules, thus getting access to it through nautilus, yet the application may fail to access it because it's using something other than gnome-vfs. Whatever requirement we make will end up actually being just rewording of "use gnome-vfs" to not mention gnome-vfs yet imply it (think file chooser, MIME data,...). The requirement might be changed to actually be "Support reading any URLs Nautilus is able to read", or something like that (now, start arguing that we don't actually need Nautilus to have Gnome desktop, and there goes our certification IMHO ;). > Basing the certification on library usage could lead to a situation > where the certification only matters to someone thinking of hacking on > the project! Agreed, but how to solve above issues then? I gave one suggestion, but I'm not so sure it's the right one. Shouldn't we try to be as practical as possible at this stage of the game? Cheers, Danilo ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
Luis/Others: This is a great topic. To be a competitive desktop you should provide the same services as the other desktops with whom you are competing: https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40010228 Going back to Federico's main points, a GNOME certification program would need to involve: - A sort-of checklist to let ISVs know what they should do in their apps to integrate well with the desktop --- to make their apps more GNOME-like. - A way for GNOME to say, "app Foo integrates better with GNOME than app Bar". - A way for users to know which app is more GNOME-like; hopefully this will give them a way to pick the better product. The good news is that I think that we are 99% of the way there, all the hard work has already been done. Most of you know that GNOME's core libraries have a strong history of stability, GNOME makes use of freedesktop.org specifications for a reasonable set of integration tasks that ISV's require, most GNOME interfaces have reasonable gtk-doc documentation, and GNOME has high-quality guidelines like the HIG. Really, this is the hard work. Kudos to those like Owen Taylor who have championed the stability that exists today in GNOME. The bad news is that the GNOME community has been very ineffective at communicating the good news to its users, including ISV's. Stability information does not seem to be clearly documented on the GNOME website or in the README files of modules which are considered Stable by the community. This means it is hard for ISV's to know what interfaces to use, or how to go about creating a certification program. The GNOME website should guide ISV's towards how to integrate with the desktop and how to address issues they might encounter. This topic is interesting to me because I happen to work for one of GNOME's ISV's, and we have our own ISV's. One of the requirements for releasing software at Sun is to try and communicate to our ISV's what interfaces they should depend upon. This is why I have been recently working to document a canonical list of interfaces that are currently considered Stable by the GNOME community. Refer here: http://live.gnome.org/SunARC I'm sure this document needs a lot of work and probably isn't fully accurate about everything. One reason I'm putting this document together on live.gnome.org is so that other people can review the information, correct any issues they might see, add interfaces I have overlooked, and make the document more complete. Feel free to pitch in. Hopefully this document can serve as a launch-pad towards more formal GNOME communication about its interfaces. Even though it is fairly rough at the moment, I think it does clearly show that enough of the GNOME interfaces are currently Stable that the GNOME community could put together a reasonable ISV story. Simply, an ISV's program can be considered Certified if it follows the appropriate style guides and limits itself to using interfaces that are not going to break. Does this mean that interfaces are never going to break? Of course not, that is why we have bugzilla. Defining things as Stable certainly does not mean that bugs will never get introduced into the code. Instead it means that if an interface declared as Stable breaks, it will be considered a bug and the GNOME community agrees to work with ISV's to accept a patch addressing the issue. At the past GUADEC in Stuttgart, it made me a bit depressed to hear so many people suggest that Sun's involvement with the GNOME community has been lackluster lately. Sun may never be a shop where cool new features like cairo, evince, and Luminocity are regularly pumped out. But everybody in the GNOME community has their strengths and weaknesses, and one of Sun's strengths is their committment to interface stability. http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-5175/6mbba7evc?a=view Some things the Sun GNOME team is doing to demonstrate our committment are the following: we are integrating ABI testing into our nightly builds so we can identify when symbols change and report bugs as appropriate. The Sun GNOME QA team has agreed to include stability testing as a part of their regular test cycle. Sun's committment to the Solaris Stability Guarantee means that Sun could probably be better used as a resource to help address stability bugs that may appear in modules declared as Stable by Sun. Sun would like for Sun customers to be able to depend on the GNOME stack as a development platform, and due to the Solaris Stability Guarantee, it is necessary to have the canonical list of Stable interfaces. This is why I'm working on the SunARC document on live.gnome.org. Unfortuantely, we here at Sun don't believe that we expose enough interfaces for ISV's to be able to write a true GNOME application (popt, atk, glib, GTK+, and libglade). It is probably necessary for Sun to also support libgnomeprint, libgnomeprintui, and GConf. Supporting libgnome, libgnomeui, and libgnomecanvas might also be a good
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
"Ciaran O'Riordan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Federico Mena Quintero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > [...]"certification levels" for GNOME > > > > [...]ISVs are starting to develop GNOME-ish apps (c.f. Adobe Acrobat > > > > Reader). > > GNOME hackers are working on free software replacements for Acrobat and many > other pieces of proprietary software. > > Telling Adobe how to improve Acrobat makes the job of the Gpdf and Evince > developers more difficult. (plus other GNOME pdf viewer projects.) As one of the main evince[1] developers, I feel like I have to reply to this comment. I don't feel at all that spending time helping Acrobat improve their product is detrimental to evince at all. In fact, when Acrobat came out, I was really disappointed at how poor an integration job they'd done and felt that we really needed to work with them to improve it. There are a couple reasons I don't feel threatened by Acroread * Evince is free software. I personally don't feel that the existence of non-free software keeps free software from developing. The benefits of it are too great. * Poppler isn't able to render every single PDF out there (though we are getting better!) Having Acroread as a fallback means that users of Free systems will be able to get work done. * The Evince team is writing a totally different application than Acroread. Acroread is a giant, fully-featured pdf viewer that supports every obscure feature that the PDF spec covers. We aim to provide a reader that's optimized for reading documents, and covers the sensible bulk of PDFs. Additionally, we are planning on being the default 'print preview' feature for GNOME, which is a role totally unsuited for Acroread. * I know that our efforts stand on their own, and that in time, users who know nothing of licensing will pick Evince over Acroread. * For all we know, Acroread might be Free software someday. I'd love if it was a great product that they opened up instead of a poor one. Thanks, -Jonathan [1] Which has replaced gpdf ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
Colin Walters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 19:34 -0400, Daniel Veillard wrote: > > We want ISV to code against Gnome/GTK+, this is a Foundation position, > > reflected by the licences of our platform libraries. Yes, I see the merit there, and LGPL is a good choice. > I'd also like to point out that "ISV" doesn't have to mean "proprietary > software". Yes. > Such an integration guide would be useful for us to point > e.g. Firefox developers at too. Yes. My point is that Gpdf, Evince, and other free software projects are what people should *aim* to help, not Adobe Acrobat (as the initial email suggested). -- Ciarán O'Riordan, | Support FSFE's work against http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/ | software patents by becomming | a Fellow: http://fsfe.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
On 7/13/05, Glynn Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Is that necessarily > > going to please 100% of ISVs? No. (Possibly not even 50%.) Will it be > > useful anyway? IMHO, yes. While we should definitely get Bryan's input > > and attempt to accomodate it as much as practicable, lets please not > > bog this down by aiming to please the iron-clad expectations of very > > serious ISVs when the current state is so abysmal for *all* consumers > > of GNOME libraries. > > Yeah, but you know as well as I do, that those serious ISVs are exactly > the people we need to target - and well, without those iron-clad > expectations, we won't get a foot in the door. Yes, but I think the difference of opinion is not the end goal, rather just how much we think we can handle right now. Personally, I think of these certification steps as a milestone towards meeting more iron-clad expectations. I think you are right that we need to keep the larger goal in mind, but I agree with Luis that we need to start smaller or risk getting unrealistic (for now) requirements that do more damage than good. :) Cheers, Elijah ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
On 7/13/05, Glynn Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Is that necessarily > > going to please 100% of ISVs? No. (Possibly not even 50%.) Will it be > > useful anyway? IMHO, yes. While we should definitely get Bryan's input > > and attempt to accomodate it as much as practicable, lets please not > > bog this down by aiming to please the iron-clad expectations of very > > serious ISVs when the current state is so abysmal for *all* consumers > > of GNOME libraries. > > Yeah, but you know as well as I do, that those serious ISVs are exactly > the people we need to target There are many kinds of ISVs we need to target, as has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread. Yes, our documentation and API/ABI issues are most glaring when we deal with, say, adobe, and yes, adobe and others of that source are incredibly important for the core mission of getting GNOME and other free software more widely used. But delaying efforts to deal with other ISVs, like ffox, ooo, etc. (who are also important, but slightly more flexible) in the meantime is self-defeating. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
Hey, > There can be a useful intermediary between 'having no docs at all' and > 'here is a documentary that explains what we promise to support for > ever and ever, amen.' I believe the goal here is to document what we > do now, and how to usefully integrate with that. Yeah, I do agree - I guess if it helps to figure out the interfaces that we do want to keep, and those we don't, then it will be useful. > Is that necessarily > going to please 100% of ISVs? No. (Possibly not even 50%.) Will it be > useful anyway? IMHO, yes. While we should definitely get Bryan's input > and attempt to accomodate it as much as practicable, lets please not > bog this down by aiming to please the iron-clad expectations of very > serious ISVs when the current state is so abysmal for *all* consumers > of GNOME libraries. Yeah, but you know as well as I do, that those serious ISVs are exactly the people we need to target - and well, without those iron-clad expectations, we won't get a foot in the door. Glynn ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 19:34 -0400, Daniel Veillard wrote: > On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 11:01:56PM +0100, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote: > > Being free software should be a requirement not "a level". > > Strongly disagree, you misunderstood what the board was aiming at then. > We want ISV to code against Gnome/GTK+, this is a Foundation position, > reflected by the licences of our platform libraries. I'd also like to point out that "ISV" doesn't have to mean "proprietary software". Such an integration guide would be useful for us to point e.g. Firefox developers at too. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 11:01:56PM +0100, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote: > Being free software should be a requirement not "a level". Strongly disagree, you misunderstood what the board was aiming at then. We want ISV to code against Gnome/GTK+, this is a Foundation position, reflected by the licences of our platform libraries. Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 08:54:58PM +0100, Andrew Sobala wrote: > I agree. I was similarly surprised by (on the wiki) the requirement to > use .glade files as a possibility for one level; surely this > certification should be about the user experience, not coding practises. > > This leads to a few modifications to the ideas suggested on the wiki; > for example, "Uses gnome-vfs" would be "Is able to open and save files > to/from any http:, ftp:, smb:, nfs: (others?) url." Which amounts to a > similar thing, but is based on how much a user would care. For glade I agree with your, but not in the gnome-vfs case. reusing gnome-vfs is a garantee of coherent behaviour in the face of various access method and coherency is a big plus IMHO. You don't want to list the methods of access, you want the given set of method access to be the same (authentication included) for all apps. you don't want app A working with HTTP with authentication but not able to save with Webdav while application be cannot authenticate but save to unprotected directories on your webdav server. One or the other is a small deficiency, but both behaviour is a user pain (and sysadmin too). Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
On 7/13/05, Glynn Foster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Heya, > > Dudes, you should work with Brian Cameron from Sun on this - I'm pretty > sure he'll pick up this thread, but he's done a HUGE amount of work in > this space already. > > I personally think a step by step effort working down through your list > is awesome - rather than doing everything at the one time, get the > initial ISV porting guide out for Level 0 *now*. > > Level 1+ is a hell of a lot harder to start thinking about because > you're basically guaranteeing a compatibility roadmap for ISVs, and I've > found [in my experience], that involves a lot more thought. > > FWIW, I don't think this is just a marketing thing - this involves a lot > of commitment from the developers too, and a level of understanding that > I'm not quite sure is there yet. There can be a useful intermediary between 'having no docs at all' and 'here is a documentary that explains what we promise to support for ever and ever, amen.' I believe the goal here is to document what we do now, and how to usefully integrate with that. Is that necessarily going to please 100% of ISVs? No. (Possibly not even 50%.) Will it be useful anyway? IMHO, yes. While we should definitely get Bryan's input and attempt to accomodate it as much as practicable, lets please not bog this down by aiming to please the iron-clad expectations of very serious ISVs when the current state is so abysmal for *all* consumers of GNOME libraries. Luis > > One of the marketing efforts that the Foundation Board discussed during > > GUADEC is the possibility of having "certification levels" for GNOME > > applications. Apps that get rated higher are "nicer" or "more > > GNOME-like"; hopefully we can use the rating metrics to let users gauge > > how well a particular app integrates with the rest of their GNOME > > desktop. > > ___ > foundation-list mailing list > foundation-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list > ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
Heya, Dudes, you should work with Brian Cameron from Sun on this - I'm pretty sure he'll pick up this thread, but he's done a HUGE amount of work in this space already. I personally think a step by step effort working down through your list is awesome - rather than doing everything at the one time, get the initial ISV porting guide out for Level 0 *now*. Level 1+ is a hell of a lot harder to start thinking about because you're basically guaranteeing a compatibility roadmap for ISVs, and I've found [in my experience], that involves a lot more thought. FWIW, I don't think this is just a marketing thing - this involves a lot of commitment from the developers too, and a level of understanding that I'm not quite sure is there yet. Glynn > One of the marketing efforts that the Foundation Board discussed during > GUADEC is the possibility of having "certification levels" for GNOME > applications. Apps that get rated higher are "nicer" or "more > GNOME-like"; hopefully we can use the rating metrics to let users gauge > how well a particular app integrates with the rest of their GNOME > desktop. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
> > Federico Mena Quintero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > [...]"certification levels" for GNOME > > > [...]ISVs are starting to develop GNOME-ish apps (c.f. Adobe Acrobat > > > Reader). GNOME hackers are working on free software replacements for Acrobat and many other pieces of proprietary software. Telling Adobe how to improve Acrobat makes the job of the Gpdf and Evince developers more difficult. (plus other GNOME pdf viewer projects.) Jonathan Blandford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Alan Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > I trust "open source" is a level too ? > > Of course! Being free software should be a requirement not "a level". (one reason above.) (I had some problems sending this mail to the list, apologies if this is received more than one, but I expect not.) -- Ciarán O'Riordan, | Support FSFE's work against http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/ | software patents by becomming | a Fellow: http://fsfe.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
Federico Mena Quintero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > [...]"certification levels" for GNOME > [...]ISVs are starting to develop GNOME-ish apps (c.f. Adobe Acrobat > Reader). GNOME hackers are working on free software replacements for Acrobat and many other pieces of proprietary software. Telling Adobe how to improve Acrobat makes the job of the Gpdf and Evince developers more difficult. (plus any other GNOME pdf viewer projects.) "Is free software" should be a requirement, not "a level". -- Ciarán O'Riordan, | Support FSFE's work against http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/ | software patents by becomming | a Fellow: http://fsfe.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
You know those printers or modems that have a penguin sticker that says "works with Linux"? Don't they give you a warm and fuzzy feeling? They give me an annoyed feeling--they ought to say "works with GNU/Linux and have a gnu along with the penguin. Whoever it was that said it's impossible to be angry when looking at a penguin must be one of those that thinks the system is "Linux". ;-}. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
Alan Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > You also need a list of things that are not acceptable, things that > regardless of how "GNOME" they are would damage the foundations 'good > name'. Things like > > - Spyware > - Applications which allow documents to spy on users without > permission/by default (like possibly Adobe's javascript in pdf) > - Software which is license violating > - Software which otherwise harms the name of GNOME > - "Software the foundation management believes would harm the reputation > of GNOME" > - Software where a referendum of members is called, counts achieved and > the referendum is passed against certification [ie a last resort] The first two seem like no-brainers, but what are you thinking of 'harming the name of GNOME'? Is a clause requiring acceptable levels of privacy sufficient? Do you have other, concrete concerns here? > > Level 2 - the app is actually written with GTK+. > > Why does this matter ? Surely it is about degrees of integration and HIG > compliance. The HIG doesn't define widget behavior very well. Unless someone goes to the trouble (and it doesn't really seem worth it) of doing this, the only way to match the feel of GTK+ is to use GTK+. Instead of 'written with GTK+', we should require that standard GTK+ widgets be used, where appropriate. > > Level N - etc. > > I trust "open source" is a level too ? Of course! > Should the lowest levels be GNOME or Freedesktop ? It would be nice to work with Freedesktop on this, but they should define their own levels. Thanks, -Jonathan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 20:42 +0100, Alan Cox wrote: > On Mer, 2005-07-13 at 16:27, Federico Mena Quintero wrote: > > Level 2 - the app is actually written with GTK+. > > Why does this matter ? Surely it is about degrees of integration and HIG > compliance. I agree. I was similarly surprised by (on the wiki) the requirement to use .glade files as a possibility for one level; surely this certification should be about the user experience, not coding practises. This leads to a few modifications to the ideas suggested on the wiki; for example, "Uses gnome-vfs" would be "Is able to open and save files to/from any http:, ftp:, smb:, nfs: (others?) url." Which amounts to a similar thing, but is based on how much a user would care. Basing the certification on library usage could lead to a situation where the certification only matters to someone thinking of hacking on the project! -- Andrew ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Certification for GNOME apps
On Mer, 2005-07-13 at 16:27, Federico Mena Quintero wrote: > - A way for users to know which app is more GNOME-like; hopefully this > will give them a way to pick the better product. You also need a list of things that are not acceptable, things that regardless of how "GNOME" they are would damage the foundations 'good name'. Things like - Spyware - Applications which allow documents to spy on users without permission/by default (like possibly Adobe's javascript in pdf) - Software which is license violating - Software which otherwise harms the name of GNOME - "Software the foundation management believes would harm the reputation of GNOME" - Software where a referendum of members is called, counts achieved and the referendum is passed against certification [ie a last resort] > > You know those printers or modems that have a penguin sticker that says > "works with Linux"? Don't they give you a warm and fuzzy feeling? > GNOME certification is the same thing: it means that someone tested > your app to see that it works well with GNOME. > > I don't have names for the certification levels yet. They are something > like this: > > Level 0 - the app runs without doing idiotic things like taking over > your desktop. It appears in the panel menus, and it installs its MIME > handlers. Pretty much any X app can be made to conform to this. Should include basic accessibility at this level. If its not accessible its software that is excluding parts of the user base and potentially foundation members and thats just -wrong- for certification. > Level 1 - the app uses the standard GNOME dialogs (file, printing). > Drag-and-drop works. See OpenOffice.org a good examples. Sounds good > > Level 2 - the app is actually written with GTK+. Why does this matter ? Surely it is about degrees of integration and HIG compliance. > > Level N - etc. I trust "open source" is a level too ? > The idea is that lower levels are easier to implement, and higher levels > denote that you actually put in a good effort to make your app > GNOME-like. Should the lowest levels be GNOME or Freedesktop ? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Certification for GNOME apps
Hi, One of the marketing efforts that the Foundation Board discussed during GUADEC is the possibility of having "certification levels" for GNOME applications. Apps that get rated higher are "nicer" or "more GNOME-like"; hopefully we can use the rating metrics to let users gauge how well a particular app integrates with the rest of their GNOME desktop. Remember that this is a MARKETING thing. ISVs are starting to develop GNOME-ish apps (c.f. Adobe Acrobat Reader). We need several things: - A sort-of checklist to let ISVs know what they should do in their apps to integrate well with the desktop --- to make their apps more GNOME-like. - A way for GNOME to say, "app Foo integrates better with GNOME than app Bar". - A way for users to know which app is more GNOME-like; hopefully this will give them a way to pick the better product. You know those printers or modems that have a penguin sticker that says "works with Linux"? Don't they give you a warm and fuzzy feeling? GNOME certification is the same thing: it means that someone tested your app to see that it works well with GNOME. I don't have names for the certification levels yet. They are something like this: Level 0 - the app runs without doing idiotic things like taking over your desktop. It appears in the panel menus, and it installs its MIME handlers. Pretty much any X app can be made to conform to this. Level 1 - the app uses the standard GNOME dialogs (file, printing). Drag-and-drop works. See OpenOffice.org a good examples. Level 2 - the app is actually written with GTK+. Level N - etc. The idea is that lower levels are easier to implement, and higher levels denote that you actually put in a good effort to make your app GNOME-like. This will benefit ISV apps and core GNOME apps. In the case of core apps, the certification checklist can be a way to keep ourselves honest: we can say that an app cannot ship as part of the GNOME platform unless it attains level N of certification (e.g. drag-and-drop would work, it would have online help, etc.). Having the checklist also allows one to plan a project better, because you can start making technical decisions from the start. The certification effort is here: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeCertification Your ideas are most welcome. Federico ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
