Re: Quo vadis, GNOME? (was: Getting Bugzilla support into Bug-buddy)

[Gregory Leblanc <gleblanc cu-portland edu>]

On 07 Feb 2001 16:36:12 +0100, Matthias Warkus wrote:
> [schnibble]
> > Now that the world is waking up to GNOME, you must acknowledge that
> > people will want to use it in ways that you might not approve of.
> > you must
> > acknowledge that it will change, and that you might not always
> > be in charge of that change. Ximian and Eazel and Sun and HP are
> > all going to be contributing to GNOME now, and that's a
> > good thing. don't resist growth just because it's got a brand and a
> > corporation behind it.
> >
> > If you truly disagree with the direction of growth, then by all
> > means
> >  do so; the beauty of free software is that it
> >  lets people disagree productively. But don't say that Ximian GNOME
> >  isn't
> > GNOME because it's commercial: Ximian abides by the GPL,
> > and everyone here loves and respects the free software community.
> > Most of us came from that community, and none of us would be here
> > without it.
> 
> That's all fine and dandy. In my opinion, the problem is not
> commercial interest. The problem is that what is perceived as the
> GNOME product is breaking into pieces because of that commercial
> interest. And however good the intentions of all the participating
> companies are: their interests do and will conflict with the interest
> of the GNOME community.
> 
> Witness the services built into Evolution and Nautilus. It would be
> the best interest of the GNOME community to have *one* GNOME Update
> Service, whatever the name, or at least don't have the functionality
> of Eazel Services and Red Carpet overlap. But it's not in the interest
> of Eazel or Ximian, apparently. Eazel and Ximian are competitors, and
> thus it would be stupid if one of them ceded any area where their
> client can deliver any services to the other.

Wait, there are services built into Evolution?  I must have missed
those, how do I use those services?  Now, there -are-some services that
look to be built in to Nautilus, but mjs (who's name I've given up on
spelling, sorry) has allayed my concerns.  I'm sure that the default
theme for Nautilus won't contain any of Eazel's, nor anybody else's,
logos in display.  Actually, I'd be just fine with an Eazel type logo in
the about box of Nautilus, since they've put so much work into making it
a product.

> Result? Two different service platforms for GNOME delivering the same
> functionality.
> 
> This is what I mean. And this will get only worse since I can't
> believe Sun will not want to deploy some kind of service platform in
> the GNOMEified StarOffice a/k/a OpenOffice.

They have to, that's part of what one gets when purchasing a Sun Solaris
workstation, and it wouldn't make sense to do it any other way.  They
provide support and service on their products, and while they're
shipping free software, they're pledging to support it, which means that
they have to use support channels that serve themselves and their
customers best.  I don't see this as a problem, it's still GNOME.  If
somebody tries to use GNOME on a RedHat Linux, or on HP-UX, the
applications will function very similarly, although they may have
slightly different graphics. 

    Greg