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

[mawarkus t-online de (Matthias Warkus)]

+++ Wed, Feb 07, 2001 at 12:26:39PM -0800 +++
Gregory Leblanc e-mails me. Film at 11. Reply right now, after the break.
> > 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?

I don't know whether they're built in already since Evolution hasn't
compiled for me in ages. Anyway, I've read in some article on
Evolution (probably I got pointed there from Gnotices) that the
"Executive Summary" built into Evolution will be something similar to
the Eazel Services, and that it will include a front end to Red
Carpet. Red Carpet in turn looks to me very similar to Nautilus'
installation and software catalogue 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.

Yeah, in the About box it's definitely okay by me. Maciej's posting
has also been very informative and comforting to me. Eazel are
obviously taking a very reasonable position on these issues. Such a
degree of insight is not all that common with companies as far as I
know.

> > 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. 

I think the point is preserving some kind of "community corporate
identity" to GNOME so it will always be recognised as GNOME.

mawa
-- 
Beware of computerized fortune-tellers!