Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
Andy: On 05/26/11 04:51, Andy Wingo wrote: You just used the name Richard Stallman as a token for this argument is invalid. You then proceeded to call someone stalinist; was it Richard? Was it GNOME OS proponents? Unclear. This was a poor attempt at humor, I guess. With my words I was only trying to discourage a divisive attitude such as Richard sometimes seems to when he talks about GNU/Linux. I clearly failed miserably. In any case, it's quite offensive, especially coming from a member of and candidate for the board. Apologies, I did not mean to offend. Brian ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
On Wed, 2011-05-25 at 08:24 +0200, Frederic Peters wrote: Hello all, GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are put into positions by different persons? I really think the GNOME OS idea is a very good one, that is, making GNOME provide access to configuration and features of the underlying OS, so that it is a complete desktop that can deal with everything the users would ever need from a desktop. But at the same time we have people from OSes other than Linux interested in using GNOME, so I think we should take those into account, even if their developers don't work on making GNOME work on those OSes as actively as the Linux crowd. So, I think we should not be targetting only Linux, but make the developer communities of those OSes more active in GNOME. More people helping can just lead to a better GNOME. As for who makes the decision, since it's a technical thing, it's up to the release team/maintainers/future technical board (if any), but I think the board should be really giving the message that any UNIX-based OS is supported in GNOME, and make it easier for the developers of those other kernels to provide their own versions of the Linux-only stuff used in GNOME (by talking to them so that they get engaged in technical discussions) When Linux-only stuff is needed in GNOME, like systemd, I think, as discussed in the thread, clear-defined interfaces should be provided so that people from other kernels can easily implement what is needed. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
On Wed, 2011-05-25 at 08:24 +0200, Frederic Peters wrote: Hello all, GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). What are your thougths on this?[2] I'd rather not expand on the subject as part of answering questions as a candidate to the Board. Do you think this is a foundation job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are put into positions by different persons? It's neither the Board's nor the Release Team's decision, in my opinion, to drive the project technically. The project, and the community that drives the project in particular, are the ones in charge of where they want the project to go. If you're asking me, and my fellow candidates, whether you think there might be push-back from partners, Advisory Board members, or distributions on this, I don't think so. The goal of the GNOME OS part of the timeline is to ensure that GNOME as a desktop doesn't block on other parts of the infrastructure, and provides a complete and integrated experience. That doesn't stop people from using bits of the GNOME stack for their applications, or special cases. That also doesn't stop people from using other distributions, Unices, or kernels from adapting GNOME for them (or their code for GNOME in some cases), it probably just wouldn't provide the same experience. Cheers [1] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeOS doesn't help, the only laid out plan I know was in Jon McCann Shell Yes! talk at GUADEC (now locked on slideshare.net) [2] this question comes first but in terms of candidacies to the board, I believe the next ones are even more important. ___ 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: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
Le mercredi 25 mai 2011 à 08:24 +0200, Frederic Peters a écrit : Hello all, GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are put into positions by different persons? Hi Fred, I've seen a lot of discussion around that but it was more feelings than rational thinking. Decisions should be based on facts. Example: how many GNOME users are *not* using Linux? How many GNOME contributors are *not* using Linux? What would be the advantages and disadvantages of switching to Linux only? I haven't seen a rational discussion about those facts yet, so bringing it to the board seems a bit early yet. Anyway, I think that the board should not take a decision. What would happens if the board take a given decision and that a substantial part of the key contributors disagree with that? I personally don't feel qualified enough to take such an important decision, even if I'm elected :-) In my opinion, the board should intervene in such technical debate only if the community want it or if the board consider that the debate is harming the community. (that looks a bit extreme). In that case, I would advocate for the board to keep a mediator role. The board will try to analyse what are the different alternatives, what they implies and who the key people are and how to reconcile them. The board should remain neutral but, if needed, it could decide to call for a referendum (this is not a prerogative of the board, any foundation member can call for a referendum if 10% of the members agree with that). Anyway, I'm a strong believer in meritocracy. Those who do the job will choose. The board is not the one doing the job here but could definitely act as a mediator. I hope I was not too long ;-) Lionel ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
2011/5/25 Frederic Peters fpet...@gnome.org: What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are put into positions by different persons? The idea of seeing a GNOME OS coming out in the future as a full and complete desktop suite is simply awesome. Many technical and non-technical decisions that are now taken respecting all the parts (distributions, companies etc.) involved in the release procedures and decisions could be finally taken by the *GNOME* Foundation (by its members and developers) on its own. On the other side, changing GNOME’s definition from a desktop manager to a complete desktop suite takes in multiple technical issues (should we go for an RPM-based system or a DEB one? should we develop just for the Linux platform? and what about BSD? etc.) that will require a lot of months and efforts to happen. Please also note that I would love seeing GNOME being freely available to everyone as it is now, everyone should be able to grab GNOME’s sources and build their own distribution like it’s been happening for several years now. Having multiple distributions and flavours is definitely a big plus within the Open Source’s communities, all the contributors and developers should be able to choose where and how they want to contribute: seeing your ideals, values and ideas reflected in a specific contribution makes you willing to do your best to see it growing and being successful. That said, I think this is not an issue to be fully discussed within the GNOME Board of Directors, it’s a decision that should be taken by the whole GNOME Foundation i ncluding *all* his members, contributors and developers together. (i.e through a referendum) In the end, as pointed out by a few other candidates this is actually just a proposal and many discussions should take place within the Release Team and all the maintainers involved to evaluate all the way this possibility, its pros and its cons to find out which decision will *really* benefit our beloved project. thanks, Andrea ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
Hello Frederic :) On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 1:24 AM, Frederic Peters fpet...@gnome.org wrote: Hello all, GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are put into positions by different persons? My personal take on GNOME OS is that it certainly is ambitious, I like the idea of expanding our user experience to a the system and not just the desktop shell and some applications. There'll always be some rough edges since we primarily hack on top of Linux but I believe good will always take us to common interfaces and APIs. It would be foolish to think we can coordinate every known system/distributor out there on what /we/ want before we actually do it. Disclaimer: I've never worked on the low level parts of our stack, so maybe I'm being naive :-). As for the Foundation, I'll agree with what others already said: technical matters are to be evaluated by release-team/maintainers. However we can influence this with Hackfests or sponsoring work on a certain area. I'll echo Ryan that the current approach of let-happen-what-will-happen can have negative consequences, I believe the approach of Feature Proposals we are seeing can give us better planning and more fruitful discussions. This remined me that when we usually ask ourselves about technical lead or making things clear, I wonder if a team doing a lot of coordination work (not decisions, working closely with RT) to get everyone on the same channel would be a more efficient investment. In my personal experience, sometimes hackers were missing the proper introduction or a mediator to get things flowing. I'd like to explore this as a solution under a more formal process than just beer budget. Thanks for the question! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 12:24 AM, Frederic Peters fpet...@gnome.org wrote: Hello all, GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are put into positions by different persons? I think it's up to the GNOME community to decide. However, I think the GNOME project lacks a common, well communicated technical vision. I think many people are doing great things but even if we don't all agree on one vision for the future, we do need to decide which ideas or visions we want the GNOME Foundation to promote. Is GNOME a set of technologies that we want other distros and mobile solution providers to use? Is it GNOME if it's not the GNOME desktop? Are the technologies a subset of GNOME? Should it be an OS? Once we have answers we are willing to talk about, it will be much easier to work with other projects and companies. I don't think we have to have a common, defined vision, but I think it would be good. While I think it unlikely we will all agree completely, I think having a vision that we communicate will get us a lot further towards our goal of a free and accessible desktop. And I do think our vision should be expanded to be much more than desktop. At the very least it should include mobile devices. But I think the board's role is to help start and facilitate those discussions and then help communicate the results to all our (new and existing) partners. Stormy Thanks, Fred [1] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeOS doesn't help, the only laid out plan I know was in Jon McCann Shell Yes! talk at GUADEC (now locked on slideshare.net) [2] this question comes first but in terms of candidacies to the board, I believe the next ones are even more important. ___ 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: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
On Wed, 2011-05-25 at 08:24 +0200, Frederic Peters wrote: GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are put into positions by different persons? To me the term GNOME OS has both a technical and a marketing aspect which are of course linked to each other. I consider the technical one rather a release-team topic while the marketing one is something to be handled by the marketing team and/or the board. On a marketing level, it is about strengthening the brand GNOME towards existing and potential customers which are currently distributions. Technically, GNOME OS seems to imply pushing for a higher level of standardization and integration with Linux platforms which might lead to increased adaption of our stack, with the backlash for other (less spread) Unix-based platforms to potentially have more work to integrate GNOME. However I consider this to be the reality already with most GNOME developers using Linux, hence no radical change here. GNOME should be welcoming to contributions making parts of the GNOME stack that are either focused on Linux or Linux-only also support other platforms. If this is not feasible because of highly increased code complexity (which seems to be a likely case e.g. for systemd) these parts of the stack must at least define and provide stable interfaces for potential implementations on non-Linux platforms and should welcome especially non-Linux platform developers to get involved in discussions on API introductions/changes for such projects. Currently I don't see anything to decide for the board or the release team on the topic GNOME OS since its definition is vague. Plus I am not convinced that the term GNOME OS instead of GNOME helps us pushing our technology, especially after the moduleset redefinition that clarified what the GNOME Core is in combination with the increased freedom on the application level (Let the market and its users decide on the latter level). andre -- mailto:ak...@gmx.net | failed http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper | http://www.openismus.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
I really think the GNOME OS idea is a very good one, that is, making GNOME provide access to configuration and features of the underlying OS, so that it is a complete desktop that can deal with everything the users would ever need from a desktop. The idea is fine, but calling it GNOME OS is confusing since GNOME was designed to be part of the GNU operating system. Someone else suggested GNOME Desktop System -- that avoids the confusion. But at the same time we have people from OSes other than Linux interested in using GNOME, Linux isn't an operating system, it's a kernel. I think you're talking about the GNU system but calling it Linux. That's a big misunderstanding. GNOME has no special relationship with Linux but does have one with the GNU system (see gnome.org). -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: [question to candidates] GNOME OS
On 05/25/2011 02:24 PM, Frederic Peters wrote: Hello all, GNOME OS has been mentioned and questioned repeatedly in recent discussions on desktop-devel-list, about its definition itself[1], and the changing (or not?) role of the GNOME project with regards to distributions (based or not on the Linux kernel). What are your thougths on this?[2] Do you think this is a foundation job to answer those questions? If not, is this a responsibility of the release team? Or something that is best left unanswered, as pieces are put into positions by different persons? My contributions being mainly in the promotion and marketing areas (as I am a non-technical contributor) I have difficulties to fully understand what GNOME OS exactly means. It surely is a great marketing term but does it mean we become a GNOME/Linux distribution or does it mean we tightly integrate with a specific kernel where functionalities provided merge deeply with that kernel? Or does it mean something else? I tend to care more about the visible parts of GNOME and how accessible we make our desktop to all kinds of people, leaving the technical bits to the experts. Now, to answer the second question I believe the foundation is here to represent its members and assist them in their endeavors whichever those are (to some extend and within the GNOME project). I find it very unrealistic for the foundation to dictate technical decisions if the foundation doesn't have manpower to implement them. The community (each and everyone voicing their opinion) should come up with an idea of what GNOME OS is and the foundation should make it understandable to our users and people outside of the project, promote it and support that idea. Thank you. Pockey Thanks, Fred [1] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeOS doesn't help, the only laid out plan I know was in Jon McCann Shell Yes! talk at GUADEC (now locked on slideshare.net) [2] this question comes first but in terms of candidacies to the board, I believe the next ones are even more important. ___ 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
