An offer to the Gnome folks.. PLEASE Read. Rather important..

[Bowie Poag <bjp primenet com>]

Lemmie try and make a long story short, here..

>From August '97 until Feb '98 I was involved in an OS development project
called InSight. My main task within the group was to create and maintain a
massive stockpile of source materials that were to have been used by the
OS we were building. 

During that time, I also researched and studied a variety of other OS'es
and desktop implementations in an attempt to draw a blueprint for the
design of InSight. As a result, I ended up designing the layout of the
desktop, and co-developed many of the concepts and innovations that were
to have been featured within it. Up until about a week ago, I had worked
on this project on a daily basis for seven months.

On January 28th I completed my end of the workload, which now consists of
well over a thousand icons, about 70 audio files, and several hundred
pages of text, written documentation, and design prototypes.

The head programmer behind InSight, it seems, has decided to quietly
abandon the project now that his tower of lies and promises has collapsed
on him. He has essentially nothing to show, after all this time. We
haven't been able to contact this person for over a week, so the remaining
members of the project (myself included) are leaving InSight.

InSight, as a development project, is more or less officially dead as of
January 8th. I am withdrawing from the project, and I'm taking my material
and ideas with me.

This leaves me with about 53MB worth of commercial-grade source material,
ideas and design innovations that I'd like to put toward a useful purpose
instead of letting it all go to waste. The design innovations center
largely on the layout of the GUI, and functionality of the underlying OS. 
I have neither the money, nor the interest to seek copyright/patent
protection for any of the ideas.

Rather than declare it all GPL, I'd like to give first dibs to the Gnome
effort. You guys seem to be well on your way to achieving your final
goals, and I'd like to help the effort along by contributing the sum total
of my development work for InSight. Its all yours, if you want it. At
least this way, 7 months of my hard work wont go down the drain. If
anything, it might help further the lead you have over the KDE Team.

I'd like (personally) to get in touch with whoever is running the show
here at Gnome to view the material, and discuss whatever interests or
questions you might have regarding it. I can be reached at the following:

 EMail: bjp@primenet.com
 Phone: (520) 320-3853 (If the line is busy, keep trying..)
 EFNet: ]Arc[, ]3162[, or ]Zzz[
 Other: via the University of Arizona CS Department, Gould-Simpson Bldg.

I'm not currently subscribed to any of the Gnome mailing lists, so please
get in touch with me via one of the methods listed above. I'd prefer phone
calls, tho. :) 


 Thanks for your time,

Bowie J. Poag
Tucson, Arizona.