Re: roadmap status update/update request

["Eugenia Loli-Queru" <eloli hotmail com>]

Rob, I don't know if you are representing the Gnome Project with your reply, 
but if you are (you are a Gnome developer anyway so I take it you have 
reasons to write what  you wrote), here's my response to you, Havoc and the 
Gnome Project:

> A feature will be implemented if and only if there is a developer who wants 
> to implement it, regardless of the number of votes it's received.

Which is exactly why open source software will never replace commercial 
software or Microsoft.

Without market research to find out what "people want" you are codemning 
your software to be "the software of its developers" instead of the 
"software of the people". It is a short-sighted view on the evolution of the 
project. With great success, great responsibilities arise too. Sucks, I 
know. But that's the reality.

Sure, no one wants to work for free for arrogant users that only know how to 
demand things like little children ask for candy (I realize, I am one of 
them), but the Project should have thought about this earlier, before 
releasing software to the world for public consumption and doing marketing 
pushes, and doing press releases and all that jazz. Keep it to yourself then 
and close down Bugzilla too.

You make Gnome sound ellitistic, and that's bad PR business to start with.

I can already hear Havoc in my head telling me "that's not how Free Software 
works", but you know what? Who cares how it works if its software is not as 
usable or full-featured as Microsoft's or Apple's? Software is software, and 
software is nothing but tools to get some work done. Open, closed, red, 
green, whatever, it's all software made out of bits and bytes.

The _only_ question for the 99% of the users is: how well the software does 
its job? You obviously, don't wanna know about how well your software 
performs in the minds of your users (point: after so many years, the No1 
user request, a menu editor or something similar that actually really works, 
is still not a reality). And if that's so, there's a major problem in the 
Gnome Project IMHO, and the Foundation (or whoever else who can) should do 
something about it. And fast.

> The [user's] help can be in the form of homework and analysis

Havoc, about users writing docs and analysis when they want a particular 
feature: *I am* going to write such an analysis for each one of my 20 
feature requests and then file them on bugzilla. Then, I will sit back and 
watch how many of these bugzilla entries, if any, ever get a response from 
its respective maintainer, let alone get realized in the next 1 year. My 
experience so far with feature requests on Gnome is that they are getting 
completely ignored and devs just do the few things they want to do for 
themselves (except when there's a Sun/Novell/RH corporate decision to 
develop something specific), and that's that.

Also, why have the devs get "angry" (as you said) for showing them a web 
page with the most wanted features? I TAKE  MAJOR OFFENSE as a user and a 
Gnome advocate & supporter, you telling me that the developers of a 
particular product don't even want to HEAR about what their users need. It 
makes me feel that Microsoft and Apple are WAY more friendly and more open 
to users' needs. Unlike most in this mailing list, "normal" people won't use 
OSS software because of political reasons, they will only use it only if it 
"does the job".

IMHO, a voting-like effort should take place every year or every 6 months, 
before the next release cycle. There, users will be able to vote for 3 
options out of 50-60 feature requests, yes, each one complete with "analysis 
and homework" links. The 6-7 most-voted ones and after the gnome devs have 
decided that the XYZ features is indeed worthwhile and makes sense, should 
be implemented for the next release.  I don't see any problem with this from 
where I stand. Sure, someone will have to sit its bum down and write code, 
but that's what developers do, right? That's why they joined the Gnome 
Project in the first place, right?

Lastly, I realize that Gnome is not a democracy. It is still governed by its 
developers and I am perfectly ok with that. But that's not a reason to shut 
off the users out of the procedure and only "use" them for bug reports. It 
royally sucks to be a Gnome user these days.

Eugenia