Re: Project Proposal: GNOME Innovation

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Wolter:

I think your graphic flowchart is a good start.  However, a lot of
GNOME modules do not really have active maintainers.  To date, I think
the community has dealt with that problem in an ad hoc manner.  However,
if we are going to formalize how such a process works, then I think
i would be of value to make it more clear how modules without
active maintainers are maintained.

Maciej:

> Ok. The only feature different then bugzilla is vote down AFAIU.
> Moderation is similar to marking NEW and vote up to adding to CC.

I think one main benefit to the innovation idea is that it creates
an archive where people can, hopefully, go to find out the discussion
behind particular design choices, and what issues were considered.
This can be helpful reference, for example, when trying to make changes
to that code later or replacing it with something new.

Since much of this discussion has already happened on mailing lists,
it would be especially useful if the innovation tool made it easy
to reference such past threads.  It would be neat if you could go
to some website and quickly find links to particular design discussions
that happened in the past, whether on mailing list or captured directly
in the innovation tool.

This sort of process is also similar to the OpenSolaris ARC
(Architecture Review Committee), where you have a process to help make
architectural decisions.

  http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/arc/

In this process, the focus is on a project's interfaces moreso than
the internal, or private, architecture of a given module.  The focus
is more to ensure that modules integrate well together on the system.
For a project like GNOME, there might be more value in studying and
documenting the internal architecture of some modules, though.  The
ARC process is probably not the right fit for the GNOME community,
but I'd encourage people to read some about how the process works
and cherry pick any good ideas that might apply.

Brian