Re: [Gnome-print] Re: GnomeFont state of affairs

[Derek Simkowiak <dereks kd-dev com>]

-> > > > > I think we need parity of goals here.  My goal is to make GNOME
-> > > > > succeed, to make it ubiquitous, and to make it the best desktop
-> > > > > environment in the world.
-> > > >
-> > > > That's a stupid goal. The goal should be to make free software
-> > > > succeed. GNOME is a means to an end. Don't lose sight of that.

	Uh... just dropping into this thread...

	Since when is Gnome a pawn in the FSF's political agenda?  I've
been a proponent of Gnome because I want a desktop that doesn't suck.
Speaking as an enduser, I could care less about whether or not Gnome
advances the GPL or FSF.

	This is one thing that bugs me--it seems some people believe that
using the GPL or LGPL automatically means you'd be willing to sacrifice
the quality of your program for the benefit of "Free Software".


-> Still, at the current stage of development Gnome has chosen to support
-> proprietary systems too. Either such support has to be dropped, or
-> separate glue libraries have to be written for those, or we need political
-> decision that now it is the time of other vendors to emulate GNU, not of
-> GNU to try being compatible with others.

	I'm not sure what "proprietary" systems are being referred to here
(as far as I can tell, proprietary systems can be easily supported by
"Free Software"; Samba and Netatalk come to mind).  If we want Gnome to
make it to the corporate desktop--which will then lead people to install
it at home--we need to make the transition from proprietary to "Free" as
seamless as possible.


-> Modular system is just easier to upgrade and modify. GNU (is Not Unix) at
-> all, so it should be trivial to port Gnome to some future architecture,
-> having very different C library.

	In contrast to the technical benefits of modular libraries, we
should consider the ease of installation (and upgrade).  Didn't we learn
anything from the 1.0 release?  Obviously, a balance must be reached.

	Perhaps just having two different install paths available would
help: one "Gnome package", that was huge and several megs in size, and
then the existing menagerie of different libs, etc.  

	For the average (AOL/I-Mac level) target user, the single package
would be worth not having to learn all the dependencies (or even what a
dependency is), or installing stuff in the right order (or even learning
shell commands).


--Derek