Re: Decisions we didn't intend to make [Was: Minutes of the meeting (2006-07-31)]

[Federico Mena Quintero <federico ximian com>]

On Tue, 2006-08-01 at 17:06 -0700, Jeff Waugh wrote:

> >    New modules may be accepted into the desktop or admin releases
> >    with a dependency on gtk#/mono, but any modules accepted into
> >    either of those release sets without a dependency on gtk#/mono may
> >    not gain one without going through the proposal process again in a
> >    subsequent release.

This is a rule that will not apply to anything, since existing modules
rarely acquire dependencies on language bindings, if ever.  I'd kill
this rule.

> I am *really* surprised that this decision was made and published, given
> that on numerous occasions it was clearly stated within the team that we
> were *not* going to make a broad decision about Gtk# applications in the
> Desktop suite... Preferring to focus on the question of Tomboy inclusion
> *alone* in this release cycle.

Given that we don't even have rules for the Desktop suite, this is a
blank issue.  

http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/ModuleRequirements/Desktop does
not exist, and yet these pages link to it:

	http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/ModuleRequirements
	http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/ReleaseSets

"Should we allow gtk-sharp apps in the Desktop" is the wrong question.  

"Should we allow apps which use the language bindings in the Desktop" is
a valid question, though a very narrow-minded one if you happen to make
it at all ;)  Not allowing the use of bindings in the desktop is more or
less the same as saying that we don't dogfood our software.

[Thought experiments:  What if Tomboy were written in Java+Gnome?  What
if James didn't exist and PyGtk was a fantastic binding with very little
publicity/usage --- and then something awesome like Sabayon came out of
the blue?]

>  I recently sent a long mail to d-d-l in an
> attempt to clarify the situation, and split out all the conflated issues
> that the community was fighting about. I wanted to make it abundantly clear
> that all of these issues can be separated out and *are* different.

That was a good mail.  You reference something from your blog...

        The Developer Platform continues as is, while the Desktop
        becomes the set of modules that define the interfaces — not the
        applications — we provide to everything else running on the
        desktop. Through both, we define what it means to integrate and
        work with GNOME, rather than our current definition of what it
        means to *be* GNOME
        
... which is pretty vague.  What do you mean by the "interfaces"?  And
"we define what it means to integrate and work with GNOME" --- is that
certification as a checklist of things to do to write Really Nice
Apps(tm)?

  Federico